In 2013, Elif Bilgin, a 16-year-old student from Istanbul, Turkey, won the Science in Action Award at the Google Science Fair for turning banana peels into a type of plastic. Her project, called "Going Bananas!", aimed to show that a common kitchen scrap could become a bio-based alternative to some petroleum-based plastics. She also took the fair's Voter's Choice Award that year.
Her story is worth revisiting not because banana peels have since replaced oil-based plastics (they haven't), but because it shows how a curious teenager can take a simple idea, test it patiently and arrive at something useful. Here is what she made, how starch-based bioplastics work, and what this kind of material can and can't do for the planet.
Who is Elif Bilgin?
Elif Bilgin was a high-school student in Istanbul when she entered the 2013 Google Science Fair, an online competition for students aged 13 to 18 from around the world. Google ran the fair every year from 2011 to 2018, with categories for ages 13–14, 15–16 and 17–18.
The Science in Action Award, presented with Scientific American, was meant for a project that could make a practical difference to an environmental, health or resource problem, and that could be put into practice and repeated in other communities. The prize included support and mentoring to help the winner develop the work further. Bilgin's banana-peel plastic fit that brief neatly: cheap raw material, simple chemistry and a clear environmental goal.
The other 2013 winners give a sense of the level she was competing at. Eric Chen of the United States took the grand prize for computer-aided work on possible flu medicines, Ann Makosinski of Canada won her age group with a flashlight powered by body heat, and Viney Kumar of Australia won the youngest category with a system to warn drivers about approaching emergency vehicles.
How a banana peel becomes plastic
The key ingredient is starch. Banana peels contain starch and cellulose, the same kinds of natural polymers that already form the basis of many bioplastics. Starch on its own is brittle and soaks up moisture, so it needs help. Manufacturers usually add a plasticiser, such as glycerol or sorbitol, which lets the starch chains slide past each other and makes the final material flexible enough to be shaped.
In broad terms, a home-scale starch plastic involves breaking down the peels, extracting a starchy paste, treating it so it doesn't rot, mixing in a plasticiser and then heating and drying the mixture into a sheet. Changing the amount of each ingredient changes how stiff, strong or bendy the result turns out. That tuning is exactly where Bilgin spent most of her time.
Thermoplastic starch is not a fringe idea. It is the most widely used bioplastic in the world, making up roughly half of the bioplastics market. What made Bilgin's project stand out was the choice of a waste product as the source of that starch, instead of crops grown specifically for it.
Two years and many failed attempts
According to her project description, the work took about two years. Her early batches either weren't strong enough or decayed too quickly, and it reportedly took ten unsuccessful trials before her final two produced a plastic with the properties she wanted. Rather than treating those failures as wasted effort, she treated them as data, adjusting the recipe each time.
She explained the idea behind the project simply:
"The banana peel is something we throw away everyday but little do we know all those peels may be put to use."
— Elif Bilgin
She hoped the material could eventually replace some petroleum-based plastic in uses such as insulation for electrical cables and cosmetic prostheses. These were proposed applications from a student project, not commercial products, but they showed she was thinking about real-world use from the start.
Edison, persistence and a famous misquote
Bilgin's story is often paired with Thomas Edison, and she cited him herself in her project write-up. Edison is reasonably credited with saying genius is "1 per cent inspiration and 99 per cent perspiration"; the earliest known printing of that wording dates to 1901, and in 1898 he gave a similar ratio of two per cent genius to 98 per cent hard work.
The other Edison line usually attached to this story, about finding ten thousand ways that won't work, is less secure. Quote Investigator traces the "10,000" wording to a 1982 speech, decades after Edison's death. The earliest version, from a 1910 biography, is closer to: "I know several thousand things that won't work." The spirit is the same, and it fits Bilgin's ten failed trials well, but the exact famous wording is a later paraphrase.
Can bioplastics really replace petroleum plastic?
Projects like this one are encouraging, but it helps to understand the bigger picture before assuming every bioplastic is a green solution.
- Bio-based is not the same as biodegradable. "Bio-based" describes where the carbon comes from. "Biodegradable" describes how the material breaks down. Some plant-based plastics never biodegrade, and some biodegradable plastics are made from oil.
- Breaking down depends on conditions. Many compostable plastics only degrade properly in industrial composting facilities. In a landfill they may break down without oxygen and release methane.
- Land matters. Growing crops to replace all plastic would need a huge area of farmland. Using waste such as fruit peels, as Bilgin did, avoids part of that problem.
- The market is still small. Bioplastics make up only a few per cent or less of global plastic production, so reducing plastic use and improving recycling remain just as important.
Life-cycle studies generally find that bioplastics save fossil energy and cut greenhouse gas emissions compared with conventional plastics, but they can carry other costs, such as fertiliser run-off from farming. The best results come from cheap, renewable feedstocks that would otherwise be thrown away. That is exactly the idea at the heart of "Going Bananas!".
What students and teachers can take from her story
- Start with something ordinary. Bilgin began with kitchen waste most people never think about.
- Expect failure as part of the method. Ten failed trials were not a detour; they were the experiment.
- Think about use, not just results. She connected her lab work to real products and real environmental problems.
- Share the work. Entering a public competition brought feedback, mentoring and an audience she wouldn't have had otherwise.
When she was asked about the most important invention of the past century, Bilgin reportedly chose the World Wide Web, because it lets people share ideas across the world in seconds. Her own project travelled the same way, inspiring classroom experiments far beyond Istanbul.
A short video in which Bilgin explained her project used to appear here:
(The video originally embedded here is no longer available on YouTube.)
Sources: Google Science Fair (2013 winners), Wikipedia; Bioplastic, Wikipedia; Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration, Quote Investigator; I have not failed: Edison quote history, Quote Investigator. Project: "Going Bananas!" by Elif Bilgin, Google Science Fair 2013.
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Very nice and usefull post
ReplyDeleteI'm from Turkey. As a Turkish, I'm really proud of her.
ReplyDelete