Turns out that leftover cooking oil in McDonald’s deep fryers is actually good for 3D printing.

Researchers at the University of Toronto Scarborough were able to turn it into a biodegradable resin, they announced in a press release.

The resin they created is cheaper to produce and can break down naturally – unlike other resins which are made using chemicals.

“Because we’re using what is essentially a natural product, in this case fats from cooking oil, nature can deal with it much better,” said Andre Simpson, who created the resin in his lab at the university, in the press release.

Simpson and his team were able to turn the cooking oil into resin because the molecules in the latter are similar to the fats in the former. One liter of cooking oil produced 420 ml of resin. Their research was published in ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering.

Read more about it here.

(Lead image source: Don Campbell / University of Toronto)