Kickstart: How about some fries with that 3D printer?

The University of Toronto Scarborough is turning used McDonald's cooking oil into a high-resolution, biodegradable resin for 3D printing.

A UTSC professor, Andre Simpson, said he had thought about the potential of converting cooking oil to resin since he got a 3D printer in his lab three years ago. The molecules used in commercial resins are similar to fats in cooking oil, he reasoned, according to a release from the university.

His team contacted major fast-food chains and the only one to respond was — surprisingly — not Tim Hortons, but McDonald's. Simpson picked up used oil from a restaurant in Scarborough and found they were able to convert about 1 liter of oil into 420 milliliters of resin, which was then used to print a plastic butterfly.

"We found that ... McDonald's waste cooking oil has excellent potential as a 3D printing resin," Simpson said.

The group's work has been published in the journal ACS Sustainable Chemistry and Engineering.
 

If you've been lucky enough to visit Paris, perhaps you've noticed the tall, cylindrical columns with advertising for concerts or other events. They're called Morris Columns (which I didn't know until Tuesday morning) and 550 of them are in use in Paris.

As our new sister publication Sustainable Plastics writes, they also have a new plastics topper. Mecelec Composites has developed new, flax-fiber-reinforced composite domes, which are a finalist in the JEC Innovation Awards. The dome is made of 23 different parts, 14 of them from composite materials.

And just to add ... Sustainable Plastics' website went live on Feb. 3, providing an in-depth look at everything from bio-based resins to recycling and lightweighting. The first print publication will be out soon. Check it out.

We've seen design competitions, cooking competitions, dance competitions, singing competitions ... even tattooing and knife making competitions. How about throwing down on some Lego building?

The Fox network begins airing Lego Masters tonight, which pits teams against one another to build complex designs using Legos. (Which are then smashed by host Will Arnett.)

The U.S. series duplicates an earlier show that featured builders from the United Kingdom and Ireland. Odds are high that we'll hear Arnett use his voice from the Lego version of Batman (from The Lego Movie and The Lego Batman Movie, of course).