An urgent need to invent something effortless, more productive and most importantly, technological advanced to the long-existing method of recycling wastes is, no doubt, something the world had long awaited, but there is good news. Substantially, nothing has been able to place an impediment on the development and continuous discovery of the world of technology. They have always dared to be at the eye and edge of innovation, of invention, of novelty and technical creativity. This simple act of productivity has led to a replacement of plastic wastes as compared to the recycling of the same.
The importance of plastic wastes replacements
Edible cutlery
It is quite alarming to find out that millions of plastics that are reused are thrown away every second in the nations of the earth. Some, after a one-time use, others, after use at most three to four times. This plastics take up to hundreds of years to become biodegraded in our physical environment. More so, a large amount of them are thrown into seas and oceans to collate and add up to our present day environmental issues.
However, we have a hopeful solution to this knot. An edible cutlery company in India called BAKEYS has introduced plastic cutleries that are eatable. Isn’t this so astounding! This company is the first in the world to invent and come up with cutleries that are edible. You can as well read up some information here www.bakeys.com
Knowing fully well that plastics, especially for kids come in spoons, forks, knifes, products from Bakeys are completely biodegradable and eatable. This invention completely exudes the idea of recycling as all products can now be consumed.
This cutlery is made from Millets, Rice and Wheat. They are very nutritious and do not need preservatives. Furthermore, these spoon are such that after they are made, they smell of the aroma they are made with. With each taste, you can smell a number of Indian ingredients that tastes so deliciously. Wow! This is huge! One would even readily eat those cutleries before finishing the meal. Technology is truly the cruise of this new age. Below are videos that shows this mind blowing invention;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIFs3eUXc8Q, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwJxNTlUWr0, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjUzGR2aOLw, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KopfexrjAY
Edible water bottles
Another striking innovation, similar to the one aforementioned, is the edible water bottle. Yes! Bottle for water reservation that can be eaten. Technology has found a safe sail in this world’s disturbing turbulence. The edible water bottle was designed by a student of the Imperial College, London, Rodrigo García González. He calls the name of the water bottle “Ooho”. Ooho looks plain and not very important at first glance but it stands as the solution to one the world’s greatest and most challenging threats.
According to statistics, this seemingly irrelevant innovation is capable of replacing hundreds into millions of billion plastics that the world dumps every year. Even in the manufacturing of these plastics water bottles, a large amount, say a million volumes of crude oil is needed and it invariably, tells on the economy of the country that that large amount of oil was extracted for something that cannot be replaced and still ends up polluting our environment, lands and oceans. This is indeed, quite pathetic and disturbing. Some even floats on the ocean view and the effect is, in turn, almost incurable.
González and his friends presents us a long-lasting solution. Rather than make a bottle and pad it up with water, they used a method that leaves the bottle to take its suitable shape as it fuses with the liquid. This innovator, together with his crew used a ball of water in its frozen state and immersed it into a chemical solution of calcium chloride that formed a jelly substance. Furthermore, this frozen ball is immersed into another solution that is extracted from brown algae. This brown algae forms around the frozen ball and forms another layer around it strengthen the substance. When this is left for a long time, it becomes thicker and harder. The reason frozen ice is preferred to water is because during the fusing of the algae, a bigger shape is acquired and there is a long lasing unification.
González and his team has produced a whole lot of prototypes and has since, tested it in various countries, Italy, Spain, and Britain. In Spain, they had even tried a number of versions of this innovation in for a TV program. You can read up more information here https://mashable.com/2017/04/11/ooho-edible-water-bottle, www.iflscience.com/chemistry/how-make-edible-water-bottles/
Below are some video sources:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDtOlIKvDQo, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chm166P9Rw0
Sources:
- http://uk.businessinsider.com/we-tried-the-edible-cutlery-that-crowdsourced-278874-heres-what-we-found-2016-4/#the-next-day-i-decided-to-test-the-spoons-resilience-with-a-hot-tomato-soup-12
- https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/Heres-A-Water-Bottle-You-Can-Actually-Eat-180951185
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic_pollution
- http://theweek.com/articles/705421/5-weird-materials-that-could-replace-plastic
