EcoApproach – Kaleb Traverso-Penn

Kaleb Traverso-Penn

EcoApproach

April 23, 2018

My eco intent is try to invent or replace plastic, for a more faster biodegradable, and edible form of plastic. I chose this intent based on two things. One I watched a video showing that besides some places around America, India is the biggest polluter when it comes to having their waters filled with plastic. It is destroying the environment and ruining what was once beautiful places to see into a place where you don’t want to go any more. There are companies both profit and non-profit doing a clean up of this and I am here to help. The second reason I chose this was I saw that Budwiser, I believe, started to make biodegradable/edible rings to hold their beer because the ring loops, have been killing and harming wildlife. So I plan on doing something similar but on a more wider scale where we have a more hybrid form of plastic that is safer for the environment, and will help those companies who are trying to clean up our oceans.

Regular plastic that we use takes approximately 500+years to start to break down, which is a long time and by then it will be too late to stop the problem. Biodegradable plastics are made from natural gases that, are and would start to breakdown faster. The only problem, is that ifthe plastics end up in landfills, that it will not start to break down but be in a state in it’ll just stay in the state that it is currently in.

Biodegradable plastics would take a shorter period of time that would make throwing them out a shorter period of time and hazard less for the environment. Hence biodegradable plastic will be a safer environmentally free option for us to use.

My idea is integrate biodegradable plastics with more of an edible side. By taking away the natural glasses and find material that is more based on a food substance, where its strong enough to carry what regular plastics bags carry. But also, take away the polluting side of it where the person can then eat the bags after using them or throw them away in the ocean where it provides food for the animals, as well as starts to breakdown within months rather than years.

The average plastic bag costs approximately 1.2 cents per bag where I am thinking, this reusable and better bag would probably be more about 2 cents per bag, maybe more, just thinking about the materials and how we would go about making something like this. 2 cents maybe a low 5-10 cents maybe the max per bag, just need to find the right ingredients for the best biodegradable and edible bag we can make.

Budget: $30k – $40k for a company

1 week testing best ingredients

2 month engineering and testing strength and durability

2 month figuring out the breakdown high and lows

Approximately $50k-$100k to make before distribution