Bibbidi Bobbidi Boo: Pumpkins into Plastic 

The revolutionary discovery that could turn vegetable waste into plastic.

A new study has proven that industrial waste from pumpkins can be used to create biodegradable plastic film for packaging. Begs the question: Why are we not seeing its implementation? 

In the fight against climate change, plastic packaging has become a common scapegoat; a 'necessary evil' for consumers and companies alike to use as justification for their lack of climate action. This scientific development creates a path to sustainability, a means of avoiding the use of plastic that, if not taken, labels humanity as lazy, ignorant, and self-destructive.

A team of food engineers at Tezpur University, Assam, India, lead by Laxmikant Badwaik, has uncovered means of producing biodegradable plastic film from the industrial waste of pumpkins.

The team collected matured pumpkin peel and seeds from industrial waste, washed and dried them before grinding them into a fine powder and adding water. This process was used to de-fat the peel and seeds, removing natural oils. The mixture was then treated with ultrasound to break down the polymers, before creating an emulsion with glycerol to plasticise the substance. This combination was then poured onto Teflon plates and heated for two days at 500C. Finally, Calcium Chloride was added to give the plastic films more strength.

Badwaik and his team experimented with five different ratios of peel to seed, before concluding that the strongest, and most water repellent films, were produced by mixtures created from equal parts peel to seed.

The films were best used for packaging food items such as bread, cakes, and sweets. Since their composition was of predominantly waste products, the films were more economical than many mass-produced plastics, and, perhaps most importantly, their biodegradable nature made them the perfect sustainable alternative to the plastics currently used.

Though research must be completed to create an economical and sustainable method of mass production, the question still stands: Why are we not seeing this ground-breaking discovery in sustainable packaging being implemented across UK mass producers?

What is more surprising yet is that this is not the only scientific breakthrough in biodegradable packaging produced from food waste.

In 2018, the European Union (EU) funded a project titled YPACK, with an end goal not too dissimilar to that of Laxmikant Badwaik and his team at the Tezpur University. Various scientific bodies completed research, funded through this project, that created similar plastic films, or 'bio-papers', from other food waste products such as cheese whey and almonds.

These papers had a decomposition rate of 90 days, incredibly fast when compared to the average rate of 450 years for plastic packaging. The bio-papers, much like the films created from pumpkin peel and seeds, were created from industrial food waste, and so where economical to produce.

But if these incredible qualities do not urge you to advocate for the use of bio-papers and pumpkin plastic films, then it should be noted that studies demonstrated these sustainable packaging materials could decrease the risk of food poisoning.

Due to the zinc oxide and oregano essential oils used in the bio-papers, they gained antimicrobial properties against Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli - two of the most common causes of food poisoning.

Additionally, these bio-papers were found to increase shelf life of fresh produce such as fruits, vegetables, and meats; if used, these bio-papers could reduce the rate of food waste, preventing overconsumption and saving money funded into produce that would otherwise become out-of-date before consumers could purchase.

The bio-papers were set to be presented at a conference in Brussels in the October of 2020 before implementation into the mainstream market. A preliminary study has already been conducted regarding bio-papers - the results yielded 7000 consumers in agreement with the use of such packaging in supermarkets.

So, what is the hold up? A ground-breaking advancement in sustainable packaging has been made, and yet little has been done to begin the implementation of such materials into mainstream market. With more than 800,000 tons of plastic packaging waste produced by leading UK supermarkets every year, the more time we waste, the further we plumet into a climate crisis, and the closer we become to the point of no return.

I urge you this autumn, when you carve your pumpkins for Halloween, bake a pumpkin pie or drink a Pumpkin Spice Latte, to consider how the waste from these products could be used to replace the packaging that currently contaminates our oceans, forests and other precious habitats. Consider how the plastic wrappers of trick-or-treating sweets, plastic bags of apples used for apple bobbing and the plastic cups and plates put out at Halloween parties, could bring us closer to an autumn without colourful leaves and crisp winds.

We can no longer use plastic packaging as an excuse for our negligence, a sustainable alternative has been provided to fill the packaging vacuum; we must take the next step towards a sustainable, environmentally friendly future.