Green bananas that have become biodegradable packaging and straws.
The development was done with great dedication by the students of the Center for Professional Education of the Cocoa Forest and Chocolate Milton Santos. The state school is located within the Terra Vista Settlement, in the municipality of Arataca, southern Bahia, 273 kilometers from the capital Salvador.
It all started in 2018 when biology professor Robson Almeida proposed the challenge of research to young people in the classroom of the Bahian settlement.
Since then, the pioneering study in producing biodegradable films from fruit biomass has been recognized for two consecutive years by the Answers for Tomorrow Award, awarded by the Center for Studies and Research in Education, Culture and Community Action (CENPEC).
The guiding professor Robson Almeida explains the step by step to transform green bananas into agroecological packaging.
"We follow the following steps: green bananas are used because of the high starch content. This banana is cooked, then crushed, until it forms a biomass. The biomass is spread on a smooth, flat surface and set to dehydrate in the sun. After the dehydrated film, remove it, put it back in a container with water to rehydrate. After rehydration the film gets the characteristic choreography and malleable, then choose a mold with the shape you want to have and put this film on top of the mold and put to dry again. In the drying process this water evaporates and turns into a rich and resistant film, so just remove the mold that is ready to pack."
Once ready, the packages made from the green banana have the ability to disintegrate fully into nature around twenty to thirty days. In addition to avoiding fruit waste and serving as organic fertilizer again for the soil, sustainable packaging created by students is an alternative to reduce the use and disposal of conventional plastic.
For those who want to put agroecological concepts into practice in classroom projects, Professor Robson Almeida gives a fundamental advice: taking into account the reality and environment that students live makes all the difference. "Most of these students are the children of a small producer or a rural worker. So it's easier for us to work with something that's tied to the reality of these boys."
Applied throughout the school year, the project continues in the experimental phase. In the next steps, new tests are planned so that packaging will soon be marketed.
ABRE - 31/07/2020
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