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Constant change and a tiny step.

                   Finally a breathing space, realization during these period is that changes are constant , changes never change.  Little steps taken for a healthy environment can also make a better difference. Milk packets:          Recently I came across few articles and posts , that opening the milk packets without cutting off the tip  and just having a slit without separating  the small piece can reduce the number of small plastics entering the soil which never gets decomposed. Karnataka has encouraged citizens in this method. This can be used in any plastic covers we use in our day to day lives.           I hope we could implement this small step.            Comment on if you got any more ideas
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Finding an alternative for single-use plastics, hopes from Vegan Spider silk!

                                   Humans are scavenging over the available resources to find a sustainable alternative. They even plan on dumping all the wastes in a black hole! We searched for sources from different degradable industrial wastes, then moved to microbial products, and even now the search is expanding. One such futuristic hopeful approach is plant-based proteins. A molecular approach.

Professor Tuomas Knowles was researching Protein Behaviour. He majorly researched,  what impact could proteins create when they fold or behaves differently and his disease of focus was Alzheimer's. He is from the Department of Chemistry. In his hunt for proteins, he identified plant-based proteins to be the most satisfying protein base due to their abundance and increased eco-friendly properties one such is a reduction in the emission of Co2

By reassembling these plant-based proteins into a very strong molecular structure, researchers thought of a strong polymer film. Now, What could serve as a model for a strong polymer?  That is when the researchers wondered about the molecular structure of Spider silk. Spider silks are flexible, robust, and have good mechanical strength, the key feature are the hydrogen bonds which are arranged in orderly and had a very high density. So what's the plan? Plant-based proteins are planned to mimic the molecular structure of spider silk to create the polymer film. Yet there is a small hurdle. Plant-based proteins are insoluble, which is a highly challenging property for assembling. Various processing steps were carried out to make them flexible enough to rearrange. This plant-based polymer film is also said to be compostable.

Using these procedures Xampla, Research and Project development in England is working to develop the proposed alternative 











Reference:

Kamada, A., Rodriguez-Garcia, M., Ruggeri, F. S., Shen, Y., Levin, A., & Knowles, T. P. (2021). Controlled self-assembly of plant proteins into high-performance multifunctional nanostructured films. Nature communications, 12(1), 1-10.

The University of Cambridge. (2021, June 10). 'Vegan spider silk' provides a sustainable alternative to single-use plastics. ScienceDaily. Retrieved June 30, 2021, from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/06/210610091110.htm

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