Sep 25 2013 Bloggers, People

By Chiara Spagnoli Gabardi

 Turkish teen Elif Bilgin has thrilled her teachers, parents and those who care about the planet by discovering a way to make bio-plastic from an item commonly found in our waste bins: banana peels. The 16 year old prodigy always showed promise academically. From the 4th grade, she was put into a school for gifted children, where she was encouraged to develop her already advanced skills and talents. Since then, the teen has excelled at her studies and learned more about climate change and the environment. Somewhat alarmed at what she was discovering, she was determined to find an alternative to petroleum produced plastics.

When Elif found that potatoes and mango peels are already used to make bio-plastic, that fact, combined with the knowledge that Thailand alone discards 200 tons of banana peels per day motivated Elif to work on extracting the starch and cellulose needed for bio-plastic production out of banana peels.

Elif's research took a couple of years, and her trials initially failed: the plastics created weren't strong enough and decayed too quickly. But her persistence paid off, since she obtained the result she was pursuing and this discovery made her win the 2013 Science in Action award, Google's third $50,000 annual competition. Now she'll continue competing as a finalist in the Google Science Fair for the 15-16-year-old category, and will travel, along with 14 other contenders, to the company's Mountain View campus in California.

She is enthusiastic that her discovery will make a difference to the planet: “The reason why I chose this particular aspect of science is that the bio-plastic is such a new concept and its range of use has been widening ever since it has been discovered (especially in the 21st century).” The young inventor's dream is to attend medical school in the US and continue with projects concerning the environment, such as building a greenhouse made of waste materials. No doubt whatever Elif does, future generations will thank her.

Disponível em: <http://eluxemagazine.com/people/elifbilgin/# sthash.kWg4Muw3.dpuf>. Acesso em: 18 fev. 2014. (Adaptado).

Glossário:

has thrilled: emocionou

peels: cascas

environment: meio ambiente

starch: amido

decayed: deterioraram

paid off: compensou

range of use: gama de uso

The excerpt “The young inventor\'s dream is to attend medical school in the US and continue with projects concerning the environment” in the last paragraph is written in direct speech as