Congratulations to Chloe Combra and Kate Howell, who won the Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation Award at the 2019 Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School Science Fair. For several years Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation has sponsored the Science Fair as a part of our Education Program, and the High School has created an award for a student project concerning the environment that expresses the mission of Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation.
Fourteen billion pounds of plastic are added to oceans and Earth’s aquatic environments yearly. This does not even include how much plastic pollution is improperly disposed of on land. Plastic can take up to 1,000 years to completely degrade, quickly filling up the ocean but going no place anytime soon. This creates many issues such as water pollution, increased amounts of harmful gases in the atmosphere, and animal endangerment.
After reading an article from earthday.org and finding out that only about 23% of the produced plastic bottles in the United States are recycled annually, we decided on a project to create a 100% biodegradable and edible water bottle. This was to address and combat all the plastic water bottles filling up landfills globally. The amount of harmful plastic in the environment can be reduced by over 14% just from plastic water bottles. Due to the rapid accumulation of environmental problems harming our world, many have addressed the situation by trying to discover ways to reverse our negative impact on the environment. The attempt to design a biodegradable water bottle could have a great positive impact on all of the negative ones hurting our environment.
A biodegradable cup created by Chloe Combra and Kate Howell.
The goal of this project was to create a tasty, edible water bottle that would fully degrade without harming the environment. This would
After the cup decomposes it is about the size of a quarter.
be determined successful if the water bottle completely deteriorated within a month but still had enough structure and sturdiness to support the basic needs of an everyday water bottle.
Once the testing of the first water bottle was completed, it was concluded that the bottle needed more structure and thicker walls, but did degrade successfully throughout a span of less than a month. The bottle was found to have a ‘sea-weedy’ and unpleasurable taste so Grape Kool aid was added to the agar mixture to make it more enjoyable for potential consumers. By collecting data on the weight of the bottle every other day, a steady trend of decreasement was found. Dissolving two teaspoons of agar in ⅜ cups water proved the perfect solution to maximize durability but minimize unnecessary bulk and extra weight of the bottle. The bottle successfully degraded, was sturdy and easy to drink from, and was also enjoyable to eat due to the added grape flavor.
-Kate Howell and Chloe Combra