Preliminary Results on Development of Sustainable and Biodegradable Food Packaging Films Using the Peels of Indigenous Banana Plant Musaingens from Enga Province of Papua New Guinea

Abstract

“Sustainability” and “Plastic/polymer pollution” are probably the two challenging phrases that the world is currently facing and the scientific investigations are focusing on. While mitigating plastic pollution has become a humongous task, sustainability has always come in handy with vastly spread biodiversity. Papua New Guinea (PNG) is one such blessed country with a hugely diversified bioresources. Food industry is one massive area that contributes to pollution, mostly through food packaging and single-use plastics. Of many known banana varieties in PNG, Musa ingens is special as it holds the record of being the world’s largest banana tree, and they are widely found at elevation limits between 1000-2100 m. Based on recent research published, this study was undertaken, however, with raw banana peels instead of ripened ones, to check if the fruit-ripening factor plays a significant role in preparing biofilms, and further if raw peels result in films with superior properties. The study indicated that raw peels were also able to produce biodegradable films. Preliminary results are encouraging and the films were able to be prepared, stretched as well as biodegraded within a definite timescale. The study indicated that some vital factors for putting these films into food packaging applications like water solubility (~21-47%,lower the better), moisture content (~16-35%, lower the better) and stretchability/elongation (~3-12%, higher the better) are still challenges to overcome. A discussion on subtle modifications done to the laboratory procedures and various results obtained will be presented. Further, a comparison of properties of films obtained from the present study with those of ripened peels reported in the literature will also be presented in the paper.