The Italian fashion brand P448 is experimenting with carp skin as part of its materials for shoes.

Yu has also developed her own products by making jewelry out of fish bone and using fish skin as accent pieces for leather jackets.

Other remaining fish parts are turned into fertilizer and fish meal.

Out of the remains of the industrial park, Yu attracted new investors and launched an even more ambitious project in January — Mighty Rivers Regional Center. It covers 14 counties along the Mississippi River in four states: Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky and Tennessee.

"We are aiming to attract investment from China, Vietnam and India," said Yu. "We had many US investors who came and left because this is not a project for quick, easy and big profit."

But it's an environmentally sound project, and Yu is proud that it is helping to fix a problem that requires decades to fix.

Luckily, her efforts have caught the eyes of people who care about the environment. National Geographic explorer Alize Carrere made a short film Adaptation: Kentucky to document her work. The film attracted ecologically conscious young entrepreneurs, such as those from Inversa, to source fish skin from her.