As the kids have been finding out more and more about what other kids are doing to help work towards the UN’s Global Goals, they found Elif Bilgin’s story, a young 16 year old girl who worked out how to make plastic from banana peel, very inspiring! The kids identified that her hard work has contributed to the goals of ‘Industry Innovation’, ‘Responsible consumption and production’ and ‘Good health and wellbeing’and Life Below Water!
So the kids learned a little about how plastics are made and the damage they can cause , and wanted to learn more about making plastic from things other than petroleum …and found a science experiment in one of their books for making a form of plastic out of milk! They did a little more research and found a few online videos. So below is their experiment step by step…in Mandarin and English.
Our milk plastic was not bad! But in doing this little activity we can also appreciate Elif’s long road of trial and error, she role models commitment, risk-taking, open-mindedness and creativity to create a really usable practical ‘plastic’ towards achieving our sustainable development goals. Elif’s video was a great springboard and inspiration for our kids to learn about the science, social issues, environmental issues and health issues of plastic, and try their own very first experiment in making such a material! At the bottom of the post is the video that helped them! We might try banana peel next time!
Here is the video the kids used to help them, one small tip, make sure the milk is 加热了(jiā rè le) ‘heated’ first or it won’t work. (Not to boiling point though). Thanks to this guy for the materials image we used too, but with Mandarin instead of English!