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Will avocado save us from plastic?

Avocado-based bioplastic is finally born. While plastic straws and disposable cutlery slowly fall out of favor, banned due to the environmental damage caused by plastic, a company based in Mexico has found an interesting alternative to this still overused material: to be transformed into bioplastic are, this time, avocado seeds!
Biofase was the first company to do this, which produces biodegradable cutlery and straws made from avocado seeds using a process whose origins date back to 2012 when Scott Mungía, the creator, was a simple chemical engineering student who thought of how to help solve environmental pollution problems. The talented young man set out in search of a reliable source of biodegradable plastic: after unsuccessfully trying to make it with other raw materials, such as mango and mamey sapote seeds (the Caribbean apricot), he experimented the possibility of using avocado seeds.
From that moment on, it took a year and a half of research to find an effective method to extract a molecular compound from the seeds in order to obtain a biopolymer, which can be molded into any shape you wish. Thanks to this innovative process it has been possible to establish a real industry with 14 employees which today produces 700 tons of bioplastic per month. At first, a first implant for 100% ecofriendly and biodegradable plastic resins production was installed in Morelia, then in 2016 a second implant was born, where cutlery was produced and in February of this year straws were also added in the production. In this way, avocado-based bioplastic is finally born, whose products degrade after 240 days of exposure to the atmospheric elements or planted in the ground, while their fossil fuel-based equivalents can take more than a century to do so.

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