The future of cuisine utensils By Rodolfo Alcorta

Plastic and other of its variables have been very useful through decades since its invention, but the cost of it, has brought little or ineffective benefits to the environment. A single plastic cup can take up to 1000 years to degrade, this, with the ascending population in the world has become a serious problem because this doesn’t enable earth to keep up with the degradation process. The use of disposable items has become a reliable source in a way that people avoids the struggle of cleaning used tableware. Plant based polymers are an alternative that have become a useful alternative to petroleum based derivates. A biodegradable item takes months to degrade compared to a plastic derived product. A resent research conducted by the Instituto Politecnico Nacional in Mexico City has used garlic skin, potato starch, gellant gum and glycerol to create a cellulose microfiber paste that is efficient in the degradation process and is an environmentally friendly waste material. Results using SEM imaging showed that bio degradable paste had characteristics similar to polystyrene, a synthetic resin that is used in making plastic utensils, these shared properties consisted of heat resistance and harmless residues of components. These results should be considered important in a way that other plant-based resins/pastes can be studied to obtain products that can help to a more environmentally sustainable world, and by this contamination can be reduced in a great scale for future generations.

Fig1.1. SEM images of biodegradable paste, and garlic skin for raw material( Varela et al,2020)

References

Hernandez-Varela, J., Chanona-Perez, J., Resendis Hernandez, P., & Villasenor Altamiano, S. (2020). Biodegradable polymers. New Alternatives Using Nanocellulose and Agroindustrial Residues.

link for peer review research article.

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