Guava leaves as preservatives, fish bones as fertilizer — creative ideas for a sustainable future

From the peaks of Nepal to the shores of Senegal, different communities face similar issues of food security. To face global challenges and empower the population living in the least developed countries, there is a need for solutions that are locally sourced, sustainable and easily reproducible.

The two winning projects of the third Elsevier Foundation Green and Sustainable Chemistry Challenge, which is jointly run by the Elsevier Foundation and Elsevier’s chemistry journals team, do just that: they propose innovative solutions to use guava leaves against food spoilage in Nepal, and to extract natural fertilizers from fish byproducts in Senegal.