Bioplastics from agro-food waste How to make sustainable even the scrap of Mediterranean Diet products Autori: Alunni 4 ACh Docenti: Tullia Aquila e Maria Rosaria Triggiano Destinatari: Alunni di Scuole Secondarie
ÂŤLearn to teach: Mediterranean diet, chemistry and business!Âť
The “sustainability” of the ancient wisdom “We have not inherited the world from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children” (Cherokee people)
Human impact on the environment Population growth
Industrialization
Deforestation
Overbuilding
The Lesson from industrial accidents in the 1900s
Some serious industrial accidents of the past century fostered awareness of the necessity of a new type of development of human activities
Sustainable Development
1987 - Brundtland Report «Our common Future» First definition of Sustainable Development “We have not inherited the world from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children” (Cherokee people)
Pillars of Sustainability Governments’ actions need to be addressed in order to find a satisfactory balance between the three traditional pillars of sustainable development: if even only one pillar is affected, the whole building falls down.
Recently, two more pillars have been added: culture (cultural well-being through intercultural dialogue) and security (peace and sustainable stability)
Green Chemistry Another side of Chemistry The "Green Chemistry" is a technological approach born in the USA in the early 1990s that today is, in Europe, a key tool for achieving sustainable development. It applies 12 innovative principles (Anastas and Warner, 1998) in the design of industrial chemical processes, aiming to eliminate or reduce the use and production of substances harmful to the environment or to the health, and to obtain energy savings.
The 7th principle of Green Chemistry A raw material or feedstocks should be renewable rather than depleting wherever technically and economically practicable
Renewable feedstocks = Biomass
Fossil Plastic vs Bioplastic
Biodegradation and compostation of biomass
Compost is a GREAT FERTILISER!!!
Reduction and Valorization of food processing by-products Sustainable development can be pursued by using agro-food wastes in the production of biodegradable plastics usable for the application in the food, pharmaceutical and agronomic fields
Food packaging
Controlled drug delivery Mulching bioplastic
Bioplastics from wastes! Composite biofilms can be obtained from the following sources of waste food industry, through reticulation of their polysaccharidic and proteic components. POLYSACCHARIDES
Homogenates of strawberry, apricot, fennel, grapefruit albedo
BIOPLASTICS
PROTEINS
Whey Proteins Soy Proteins Ovalbumin, Phaseolin
An edible biofilm from fennel waste In the Focaccia laboratory fennel (or strawberry) wastes and dairy industry (cheese whey) wastes, used respectively as polysaccharidic and proteic source, were used for the preparation of composites and edible films* Polysaccharides + Proteins
Composite film with great CO2 and O2 barrier and mechanical properties
* experimental protocol by L. Mariniello – Facoltà di Agraria- Portici (NA)
Let's go to the laboratory...!
Fennel homogenate preparation
The external leaf sheaths of fennels were cut into pieces of about 1 cm3
Fennel homogenate preparation
...weighed, additionated of water in equal parts to the same amount of the fennel mass...
Fennel homogenate preparation
‌boiled for 30 minutes and cooled
Fennel homogenate preparation After cooling, the fennel fibrous part was eliminated by centrifugation, obtaining a fennel homogenate
Preparation of fennel biofilms
Two parts of fennel homogenate and one of whey were poured
in a beaker and mixed very slowly, to avoid the formation of bubbles and foam...
Preparation of fennel biofilms
An amount of the mixture was poured in a Petri dish…
Preparation of fennel biofilms
‌and dried in an oven at 40 °C for 24-48 hours
Preparation of fennel biofilms Once dried, a biofilm had formed in the Petri dish!!
Preparation of fennel biofilms
The biofilm produced was shiny and translucent ...biodegradable, compostable and edible!!
Biofilms from strawberries The same procedure was followed with strawberries!
Bioplastics from wastes For natural polymer-based film preparation, it could be advisable to recycle by-products of the agricultural
industries,
that
usually
contain
carbohydrates and proteins. In this way, new value could be added to several agricultural by-products
with the concomitant goal of managing lower volumes of wastes and reducing environmental pollution.
Primo Levi “This is the great problem of packaging, which
every experienced chemist knows: and it was
well known to God Almighty, who solved it brilliantly. Now, at that time, there did not exist polyethylene, which would have suited me
perfectly since it is flexible, light, and splendidly impermeable:
but
it
is
also
a
bit
too
incorruptible, and not by chance God Almighty himself,
although
he
is
a
master
of
polymerization, abstained from patenting it: “He does not like incorruptible things.”
Primo Levi “The Periodic TableCerium” - 1975
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