Raipur (Chhattisgarh): Pollution due to polythene bags and garbage is one of the biggest problems globally. In India, the government has banned single-use plastic to tackle this issue. The government is emphasising finding different natural and bio-degradable alternatives to plastic. Scientists at Indira Gandhi Agricultural University in Raipur are conducting research to produce environment-friendly carry bags made out of rice starch, that can be buried and used as compost when it is time to trash it. According to Shubha Banerjee, a scientist at the university, they have progressed about 10 to 15 per cent in their research and are already creating Rice Protein Isolates (RPI) for it.
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The process of making carry bags from starch: Rice contains a lot of starch and the researchers are using a technique they developed at the university, which they used to extract protein isolates from rice, to extract high-quality starch from the rice. In the past, starch extracted from rice has been used in food products and bioethanol, but the researchers conducted an experiment where they tried to convert this starch into bio-degradable bio-plastic.
Bio-plastics: According to scientist Banerjee, already available bio-plastics contain chemicals like Polylactic Acid (PLA) as binding agents, which do some damage to the environment even after degrading. The aim of this research is to create a bio-plastic, which will be environment-friendly with the use of natural cotton fibres, jute fibres and fungus from the mushrooms as binding agents, which will have no residual effect on the soil. The scientists have achieved 10 to 15 per cent progression in their research and the effort will take around three years to be implemented on a large scale, as it is one-of-a-kind research being conducted in India, says scientist Banerjee.
