DIY eco friendly packaging

Just three components – and your DIY eco-friendly packaging is ready!

Safe­ty pre­cau­tions

Warn­ing! Only un­der adult su­per­vi­sion.

Equip­ment

  • starch (4 g or 2 tsp);
  • veg­etable glyc­erin (4 g or 1 tsp);
  • drink­ing wa­ter (100 mL or 3.5 fl oz);
  • non-stick bak­ing sheet.

Step-by-step in­struc­tions

Mix wa­ter and glyc­erin and heat to a boil. Add starch while stir­ring and wait un­til the mix­ture is smooth. Then pour it onto a bak­ing sheet and leave to dry for two days. The re­sult is a thin, en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly-friend­ly film. It can be used to pack food, and the used film can sim­ply be dis­solved in wa­ter.

Process de­scrip­tion

Starch is made up of large mol­e­cules called polysac­cha­rides. When heat­ed, they form many weak bonds with wa­ter and glyc­erin mol­e­cules. These bonds are re­tained af­ter the mix­ture dries, lead­ing to the for­ma­tion of an elas­tic film. More­over, it read­i­ly dis­solves in wa­ter, since starch is wa­ter-sol­u­ble. Na­ture will thank you!

A sim­i­lar ex­per­i­ment is in­clud­ed in the “Chem­istry of ma­te­ri­als” set from the MEL Sci­ence sub­scrip­tion.

Try it