A Brief Study on Starch Based Bio-Plastics Produced From Staple Food Items Kothekar Shrushti, Shukla Shivangi, Suneetha V* School of Bio Sciences and Technology, VIT, Vellore, Tamil Nadu, India-632014 *Corresponding Author E-mail: vsuneetha@vit.ac.in
Online published on 30 January, 2019. Abstract Increasing amounts of plastic contamination in the oceans leads to their ingestion by various organisms, causing suffocation by macro particles and bioaccumulation of micro-particles in smaller to larger organisms in the food chain, human beings at the very end of it (Racusin, Jacob Deva., and Ace McArleton, 2012, The Natural Building Companion: a Comprehensive Guide to Integrative Design and Construction. Chelsea Green Publishing). Hence, our food eats our own garbage. Bio-plastics have been a recent development, and are being considered for usage in medical and pharmaceutical industry too, apart from being the substitute to plastic which we normally use. In this paper we propose methods to produce bio-plastics from starch based, staple food items, which can not only biodegrade, but are also edible. We make a comparative study of bio-plastics produced from sources such as banana peel, corn and potato, amongst each other and against synthetic plastic, discuss their properties along with biodegradability from soil microbes, concluding the most apt bio-plastic to substitute the commonly used plastics. Top Keywords Bio-plastic, Biodegrade, Edible, Soil microbe. Top |