A start-up company that helped design how astronauts grow and recycle food in space is working with Heriot-Watt University to tackle the problem of dairy waste here on Earth. Take Root Bio worked with the International Centre for Brewing and Distilling (ICBD) to successfully turn salty whey, a high-volume by-product from cheese production, into a widely used fuel called bioethanol. Together, they looked at how the sugars found in salty whey could be transformed through a bio-based process, creating value from a material that is often difficult and costly to manage. The challenge of disposing of salty whey is significant. Salty whey is produced in huge volumes and can be difficult to deal with, so we wanted to find out whether there was a better use for it.