Composite Algae Bioplastic

The formulation of an algae composite bioplastic as a solution to the excesive use of oil-based plastics.

Our product is a composite meant to replace oil-based plastics. A composite is a combination of two diferent materials intended two realize a certain job taking advantage of some of both materials' properties. 

As ingredients for the composite's formulation there were selected naturally ocurring bioplastics from algae, which serve as reinforcement, and latex performing as the matrix.

The main processes are the extraction of the algae gels, drying, rehydration and mixing; none of those require nor complex or expensive tecnology. For reference, this could be made at your own kitchen!

To obtain the gels from the algae they must be previously washed and soaked on water, then algae must be chopped and boiled until the water reduces, the resulting solution is filtered, reboiled and filtered once again, then we will have the gel containing the biopolymers, which will be sundryied, obtaining a bioplastic sheet. At the other hand latex can be extracted applying an enzymatic solution. Once we have both ingredients the bioplastic sheets are rehydrated and mixed with the latex, resulting on a denser gel, which is dryed to finally obtain our biodegradable composite.

The excesive use of plastic may not be stopped before the most severe effects of the climate change crisis take place, therefore it is important to develope new materials that can be readily decomposed at common environmental conditions. It is alarming that from 1950 to 2015 the global plastic production increased from 5 million tons to 322 million tons.

On our community there doesn't seem to be a great problem, most people find it easy to buy single-use items, bottled water, among other plastic items, yet Monterrey has been ranked as one of the most contaminated cities in Mexico. We produce so much inorganic waste that it surpasses the capacity of our landfills, leading to ilegal activities such as trash burning, pits and so on. The reason it has been ignored is that the people with the tools to do something about it belong to greater socioeconomic levels, were it is easier to ignore the present crisis, and that is something that must change today. 

Bioplastics are the optimum solution, still most bioplastics' formulations have almost the same decomposition rate as oil-based plastics so we want to develope a formulation that allows the final product to decompose at higher rate while taking advantage of raw material available at our locality and cleaning some our water bodies at the same time from its excess algae. 

Our solution serves to people who want to improve their lifestyles from a green perspective who find existing bioplastic products still unaccesible either because of the prices due to processes and/or raw material or due to the oblivion from the few companies producing bioplastics at our locality. These people may know that there are other choices that could help mitigate plastic contamination, even so these possibilities still reside far away from their context, bioplastics are still seen as a luxury only accomodated people can afford. Our solution may not be as industrialized as others, but its simplicity is what makes it more affordable so people don't have to decide between acting green or having food at their tables today.

Throughout our research at the university, volunteer experiences and other social initiatives with an interest in ecology, we began to perceive the urgent needs that exist worldwide and that is how we learned about the Sustainable Development Goals established in the 2030 Agenda by of the United Nations Organization.

These SDGs are homogeneous for the participats, however they are adaptable to each country as it is in Mexico.
Our initiative is interested in adding value to SDG 8 "Promote inclusive and sustainable economic growth, employment and decent work for all" We want to achieve higher levels of economic productivity through diversification, technological modernization and innovation, focusing on the sectors of increased added value and intensive use of labour., 12 "Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns" for the strengthening of scientific and technological capacity in order to move towards more sustainable patterns of consumption and production, and 13 "Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts" so that with our product we improve education, awareness and human and institutional capacity regarding climate change mitigation, adaptation to it, reduction of its effects and early warning.

We selected the concept stage. To this day we have developed a plan to start our research based on the available literature, intending to adjust and optimize existing methods according to the sources available at our locality. We have done research about different types of bioplastics, their characteristics, different formulations using from micro to magro algae, this with the reason of contextualizating ourselves on a realistic setting and also so when we find any issue we know how to do an irterpretation of it so we can contrive a solution.

As other scientists, we believe algae bioplastics are game changers on the fight against climate change and plastic pollution, yet there has been very little investigation arround it. It all started as a class project but we saw it as an opportunity to make a change on our community. 

To produce this algae composite there will be needed heating pots were we can extract the gels from the algae, also mixing devises to form the bioplastic emulsions. Other than that, we would need UV-Vis spectrophotometer to characterize our emulsion and an X-ray diffractometer to characterize the final product, which we have available at our college.

We plan to impact the lives of approximately 700 people in the first year, among whom we consider the valuable personnel who contribute to the solution we propose and clients who want to be part of our ecological revolution.

Due to our ideals of expansion, we hope that the growth of the initiative will increase by incorporating optimal solutions to the environmental problems of the Mexican coasts due to sargassum. In subsequent years we expect an impact of more than 2,000 people.

-Design an ecological solution capable of replacing bioplastics with a degradation period of less than 40 days.

-Include women in the initiative in order to empower girls and adolescents in areas of science and technology.

-Decrease production costs by 20% in order to be accessible to all economies in the first 8 months of launch.

-Invest in research to improve the proposed formulation in the fifth month of the first year.

-Increase market networks to have a national scope in the ninth month of the first year.

- Effectiveness: Quarterly market research to know the performance of the product in the market and rethink the idea if necessary.
- Efficiency: Laboratory tests before going to market, which allow us to know in detail the mechanical properties of the product.
- Productivity: generation of results from the resources used.
- Quality tests
- Competitiveness

The main downside we could get to experiment is that our school limits the lab permits due to the pandemic, so if suddenly there is a tremendous rise we might be denied access to some important facilities.

Ximena Mercado: 

Ximena is a nanotechnology engineering student at ITESM with the distinction "Líderes del mañana" that grants 100% scholarships to students with high-impact social projects. On the other hand, she is an international marketing student at UnADM. She is currently the digital media coordinator of the NANO 2022 congress, founder of Xiqui project as a eco-cosmetics brand and co-founder of the NanoInnova project. She has collaborated in social projects such as GPRIJ A.C. to promote citizen participation of indigenous communities in science and technology and training in issues of global indigenism as an Intern in the international Peer to Peer program at York University, "Jóvenes en la Química" to award university scholarships to talented young people in the north region of Mexico State and finally in "Aprendamos Juntos" as a math and spanish tutor to reduce school dropouts.

Brisa Mendoza:

Brisa is a current student of nanotechnology engeneering at Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education. She has participated on the NASA School Clouds Observation Project as team leader and representative resulting on 3 consecutive first places. Later on she participated at CEAEF with the Cavendish Experiment and a prototipe of a desinfecting capsule. Once she got to college she volunteered to Beutiful Patterns Winter 2021. She has taken several seminars related to robotics, chemistry and physics such as the Nanolab Summer Seminar Course. Currently she participates as a volunteer at the photopolymer and photocatalysts lab directed by Saeed Beigiboroujeni, specialist on polymer science.

Our team has conjugates both social and reasearch skills, having so much potential to develope efective and goal oriented solutions that can reach who they must.

We are not partnered with any organization yet.

With the Girls Save the World Prize we could be able to go further than just our bioplastic composite production, but to involve more people to it. As an example, we could start as an online community were mexican girls and women can get to know us, our work and how can they get involved so they can apply this knowledge all across the country. Something similar to what happened on one of the latest editions of beutifful patters. 

As women, one of our goals is to be an inspiration for the young girls of Mexico, demonstrating that standing out in science and technology does not represent a limitation.

On the other hand, we want to be an organization initiated by women and made up mostly of them. This is due to the clear statistics in our country, since the laws at work do not favor equality between women and men. For example, in terms of maternity, women are the only ones who must compulsorily take maternity leave. It is also important to mention that the number of women in STEM areas has a significant difference due to the lack of representation of women in these areas and also in entrepreneurship.