Instanbul Priodogy Creates Bio-Plastics from Banana Peels ~ Shield Spirit

Sunday, November 23, 2014

Instanbul Priodogy Creates Bio-Plastics from Banana Peels

16 Year-Old Invents Bio-Plastic From Banana Peels

Elif Bilgin From Instanbul created bio-plastics

Young people today are constantly creating new ways in which we can bring change to the planet. For example, 19-year-old Boyan Slat has revealed his plans to the world regarding his “Ocean Cleanup Array” that has the potential to remove 7,250,000 tons of plastic waste from the world’s oceans. The revolutionary device consists of an anchored network of floating booms and processing platforms that could be dispatched to garbage patches within the oceans of the Earth. You can read more about that here.

This time we are bringing attention to 16 year old Elif Bilgin, from Istanbul, Turkey. Elif discovered a way to make bio plastic from banana peels, something she had been working on for two years before she was finally successful.

Her Own Research

By doing her own independent research, she learned that starch and cellulose are already used in the bio-plastic industry, and that they are extremely important when it comes to developing these products. You can obtain these from the skin of mangoes for example, or as she discovered, banana peels. She also noted in her research that Thailand discards 200 tons of banana peels per day, therefore the starch and cellulose that is so important for plastic production could be put to much better use.

As a result of her discovery, Elif won the 2013 $50,000 Science in Action award at the third annual Google science fair.

This 16 year old has shown the world that it is very possible to create a plastic that is solid and reliable. Something so simple could change the world in so many different ways, hopefully as discoveries such as these become more widely known we will begin to replace them with our current, toxic, outdated methods.

We have so many solutions to the world’s problems, yet we are made to believe that we are facing a number of crisis’ and we need to do something about it without realizing that we can already do something about it, and the solutions are here. This is one of many small examples that would get the ball rolling.