Sustainable bacterial cellulose production by low cost feedstock: evaluation of apple and tea by-products as alternative sources of nutrients

Abstract The high applicability of Bacterial Cellulose (BC) is often challenging due to its production costs, which ultimately prevents widespread use. Therefore, the present study aimed investigate BC using alternative feedstock replace high-cost synthetic carbon and nitrogen sources evaluate physical structural properties produced membranes. was through a microbial consortium from kombucha, formulated media sustained promising production, especially association apple wastes (at 10% (W/V)) with tea mixture, yield similar on Hestrin–Schramm (HS) control media. Moreover, samples in this also exhibited comparable HS media, water-holding capacity retention ability, thermal stability, mechanical behavior, crystallinity index 87.61% 88.08%, respectively. Thus, our findings substantiated that expensive substrates, such as glucose, peptone, yeast extract, could be successfully replaced by wastes, black green tea, for while maintaining remarkable properties. Furthermore, besides low-cost advantage, bioconversion waste reduces environmental burden caused disposal landfills.