The Need For Biodegradable Eco-Friendly Plastic

Plastics are widely used by humans for their favorable properties: cheap, lightweight, flexible, and durable (Rosario & Dell, 2010). Almost everything which the community buys is made from non-reusable plastics like straws, water bottles, single-sachet packaging and many more. However, plastics are not completely safe and reusable. According to Prasad (2014), plastics have relatively high greenhouse gas emissions as well as fossil fuel usage, which is detrimental to our environment. There is also an observed plastic pollution filling up the land and sea posing a major threat to our ecosystem because it could take up thousands of years to decompose (Kershaw, 2015).

Meanwhile, decomposition happens when microorganisms underground eat and tear apart the structure of the plastic (Somaree, 2016). Methods used to destroy other types of waste such as burning, and burying are not suitable for plastic destruction. In response to these problems associated with plastic waste, production of biodegradable plastics has been of great interest.

Bioplastics were mainly developed in an effort to find a replacement for conventional plastics whose problems include taking thousands of years to decompose contributing to landfills and pollution, endangering marine life, increasing the cost and scarcity of petroleum, yielding toxic and carcinogenic chemicals during production and having a large carbon footprint in both production and recycling.

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Tropical islands such as the Philippines inhabit various crops. These include potatoes, a well-known root crop which originated from Andes of South America where it is the number one cultivated crop in the area (Midmore, 1992). Meanwhile, the lands of the tropical and subtropical countries inhabit a plentiful species of Musa paradisiaca or simply bananas, belonging to the Musaceae family (Sarangi, 2014).

Both of these crops are known to be of high starch content. Starches are useful in container production and other biodegradable materials which emerge along with today’s economic developments because of its accessibility and environment-friendliness compared to other polymers.

Relating the usefulness of starch to the world of industry, its versatility ranges from being a thickening agent in processed foods up to the non-food category for it can be produced as paper or board, packaging materials and biodegradable plastics as well (Pfister & Zeeman, 2016).

Thus, enlightened by the facts gathered and observations obtained from the surroundings, the researchers plan to utilize and extract the starches from potato (Sulanom tuberosum) and banana (Musa paradisiaca) peels then proceed to making a biodegradable eco-friendly plastic.