Title: INQUIRY: Invent your own sustainable plastic
Course: GG 22/23 Leuphana-Copy > Section: 2.1 Plastic // Recycle

Did you know that you can produce bio(-degradable) plastic yourself? In fact, you can do this using everyday materials and devices almost everyone has in their kitchen. Here's how you can try it out!

The internet is full of guides, videos, booklets, etc. with demonstrations of home-made plastic. You can take those examples as a starting point and embark on your own expedition. "To understand is to invent", said he great psychologist Jean Piaget...

Materials

You will need:

- natural material that gelatinizes (e.g., corn starch, potato starch, agar-agar) when mixed with a liquid (e.g. water),
- additonal ingredients that add specific qualities to your product (e.g., oil, glycerin)
- a bowl and spoon to mix everything,
- something to form your product,
- heat (microwave, oven)
- time and patience.

That's not so difficult to obtain, is it?

Method(s)

To give you an idea what to do, here are some starting points for your investigation:

- "Instructables" - a web platform spin-off from MIT - gives you this easy recipe and detailed discussion for Easy bio-degradable plastic.
- Oregon State University developed a Teaching Unit about biodegradable plastic. For this study, different variables are systematically changed and observed. You are asked to find out what they contribute to the quality of the product. Creating biodegradable plastic (students start on page 5, teachers on page 1).
- Those who want to work with instructions in German, go to this YouTube video  "Herstellung biologisch abbaubarer Kunststoffe aus: Kartoffeln". From there, you will discover more German language videos on the subject.

Your Goal

- Invent your specific bio-degradable plastic.
- Determine the purpose of its use and show your group and the Going Greeen community that your invention meets the challenge.
- Vary the different components of your mixture and find out how it changes the end product. Report on your experience.
- Produce and test your product.
- If possible, study how your product decomposes (if at all).
- Evaluate your product: In which way is it "bio", "degradable", and "sustainable"?

Doing scientific inquiry

For this task we suggest that you engage in an inquiring and inventing process as do scientists and engineers. Compared to most of your school experience, this learning situation is open and risky. Your teacher does not know the outcome - he or she certainly knows more about the scientific background and can support you with some tips, but what you will find out is not written in a study guide.

You have to do the thinking on your own, preferably in a small group to provide mutual support and different competencies.

To make sure that your work is scientifically correct, follow these basic rules:

- Formulate some suitable assumptions/hypotheses first. They should reflect your knowledge from daily life and common experience and will help you to stay to your question.Determine the variables in the experiment. To study their contribution to the experiment, change only one variable at a time. You need patience for such a process!
- When you feel you are making progress, repeat your experiment several times. As you work in real time, there are many sources for errors. Make sure that your outcomes are reliable.
- Make the conditions of your experiment fair. That may mean: use always the same microwave, use the same brand of starch, etc. Or use the microwave and the starch brand as variables with which you do a controlled experiment.
- Don't be afraid of failures and flops. Accept detours as enrichment. Don't stop out of disappointment. Take a break... and start anew.