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ISTANBUL — When Elif Bilgin was 14, she became frustrated with the plastic trash she would see in the otherwise beautiful sea near her home in Istanbul, Turkey.
She spent the next two years researching alternatives to petroleum-based plastic and created a bioplastic made using banana peels. Bilgin sent in her project to the Google Science Fair with no hope of being selected as a finalist, she said during a talk at TEDxVienna.
However, the invention won the 16-year-old the Scientific American Science in Action Award and the Voter’s Choice Award from the 2013 Google Science Fair. A video of her work was posted online in February and recently went viral.
“For me, this means that my project actually has a potential to be a solution to the increasing pollution problem caused by petroleum-based plastic,” Biglin told Scientific American after she learned her project won an award. “It also means that I have started the process of changing the world, which makes me feel like a winner already”
It also means that I have started the process of changing the world, which makes me feel like a winner already.
–Elif Bilgin
Bilgin took advantage of the starches found in bananas to create the bioplastic. She said her creation could be used for cosmetic prosthesis and cable insulation. The process of making the plastic can be viewed in a video posted by the Google Science Fair.
When she spoke at TEDxVienna in December, Bilgin said she started asking questions about everything when she was very small. One of her first inventions was window wipers for her glasses in the second grade.
“Of course I got many strange looks. But hey, it worked,” she said in the TEDx video. “After my little project I stepped into a world of unlimited possibilities. I knew I wanted to keep inventing and researching.”
