WastePack

Intro

WastePack是一款新型的包材。我們希望WastePack能取代水果運送過程中大量使用的一次性塑膠包材。WastePack最大的特色是結合了紙和塑膠的優點，可以阻隔冷藏車內的濕氣，使用過後還能分解，不會對環境造成危害。此外，WastePack能抗菌，讓水果在運送過程中，有個乾淨的環境，減少發霉、爛掉掉的機會。WastePack由稻草，海鮮殼，和PLA製成。我們變廢為寶，讓稻草和海鮮殼有了新的價值。WastePack使用農業廢棄物作為材料，因此能壓低價格和塑膠競爭。農民們還能藉由販賣稻草，增加一份收入。WastePack可以配合不同的使用場合，做成不同的厚度、樣式，提供水果最好的保護。

Story Behind the Project

In a general education class in 2020, Professor Bill encouraged the students to use their creativity and existing technology to solve problems. Our team, IDE, chose "food waste" as our topic. When doing research, we found that there were already a lot of well-developed products and services aiming to help people reduce food waste, such as smart refrigerator that can remind you what is inside it, or apps that help you plan your meal so you how much food to buy at the supermarket. Professor Bill mentioned that food waste also happens in the upstream of the supply chain, but few products and services are made to solve the problem. One member of our team has made paper with rice straw before, we used her project as the base and made improvements based on it. When searching for possible use of the product, we landed on high-end fruits' packaging because the customers are more willing to pay more for better packaging.
When designing the product, we want to have the advantages of the two most used materials for packaging, paper and plastic. But the chemical properties of paper and plastic are very different, making them difficult to combine. Luckily, we find a way to make it work in the end. We also want to make our product anti-bacterial, which is an important yet uncommon property for packaging. The initial ingredient we chose for anti-bacterial effect was "catechin" extracted from used tea leaves, but the extraction process is not effective enough, and it can't stick on the surface of the packaging. The second and third ingredient we went for was chemicals extracted from persimmon leaves and essential oil extracted from citrus fruit, but they weren't suitable, either. Finally, we picked "chitosan", which can be extracted from seafood waste.

Climate Change Events

Climate Change Innovation Competition of the Ministry of Education


Taiwan Climate Action Expo


Project Information

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