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Teen creates bio-plastic from banana peels

Sixteen-year-old Elif Bilgin of Turkey has developed a way to replace traditional petroleum-based plastic with banana peels.

The Turkish teen took home a US$50,000 prize for her project “Go Bananas!” Thursday after winning the second annual Scientific American Science in Action Award, associated with Google Science Fair.

“My project makes it possible to use banana peels, a waste material which is thrown away almost every day, in the electrical insulation of cables,” Bilgin said in a media statement.

“This is both an extremely nature-friendly and cheap process, which has the potential to decrease the amount of pollution created due to the use of plastics, which contain petroleum derivatives.”

Bilgin spent two years developing the bio-plastic, which does not decay. She said the process is so easy that it is possible to repeat at home, with special care taken for chemicals used in the production process.

In September, the teen will compete at Google’s California headquarters for the overall Google Science Fair prize for 15-to-16 year olds. She will also have access to a one-year mentorship.

Has anyone else noticed how many brilliant breakthroughs in science are coming from the minds of teenage girls the last few years? Between this story, the four girls in Nigeria who invented a generator that runs on urine, the California girl who invented a twenty-second cell phone charger… Who knows where we’d be today without the patriarchal interference of men, stealing or hiding the brilliance of women?

Our future is in the hands of teenage girls, and I for one feel really good about that.

When I was about 7 I wanted to invent a thing that purified water based off of fish gills. I went to the school library to do research like a good little inventor and one of my teachers asked me what I was doing, and then told me that there were some new barbie books in, and that I’d probably be better off with those.

Don’t forget the girl who invented a torch that’d light up just from the heat of your hands

basically everyone should stop s***ting on teenage girls because they do awesome things when you let them

or that one time a girl found the cure for cancer that we could be using in 15 years

But nah, girls and women just suck at math and science and have never invented anything worthwhile. Sure. Right. 

Actually, the reason why these people aren’t heard has nothing to do with their gender. It’s because there’s no money in renewable energy. If anyone can have the energy they need to power their homes or cars from piss and banana peels, then petroleum companies will take a huge hit in profits. That’s why we aren’t using things like solar energy and wind energy to power most things. It’s all because it’s about making money.

That’s also why they are never gonna cure diseases like AIDS or cancer.