Hollister Students Create Own Bioplastic

The Hollister School District has been trying to move towards a more eco-friendly school with help from local businesses and organizations.

Dr. Sean Woods, Assistant Superintendent of District Operations, tells Ozarks First they have taken a ten-year approach to become a district that’s a model for students and what it’s like to go ‘green’.

“We’ve done that by installing $800,000 worth of solar panels, which has lowered energy cost and energy usage. We’ve done that by installing LED lighting in our buildings. And then most recently, we’ve done that through partnerships with Purina Farms and the waste management districts in southern Missouri, mostly by putting trailers on our property.” said Woods. Three trailers on the school property will be used to haul off all recyclable items.

Woods said students have started taking everyday items and repurposing them or in some instances, even turning those into brand new items.

“We have some very special students that attend our school district and a few of them have really taken the occasion to create something new and taken it to a whole other level through innovation, creativity and what we’ve really tried to do is harness the four C’s of 21st-century learning, and that’s creativity, communication, collaboration, and critical thinking. And two of our young ladies have done just that,” said Woods.

Juniors Hailey Greene and Kassidy Devore have created bioplastic out of dissolved water bottles and corn oil. The pair began working together for a science fair. They tried to combine plant proteins with plastic, but it would not melt. They ended up switching to using coffee grounds and accidentally ended up with biodegradable plastic.

“We get the corn oil from the kitchen, we get the shredded paper from the office, and we get the coffee grounds from the teachers who are drinking a lot of coffee. So really, the only thing that we have to buy is the borax and the corn starch,” says Devore. She said they have had to go digging through classroom trash bins to find bottles and other materials.

According to Greene, most ways of dissolving plastic uses harmful chemicals like formaldehyde and fentanyl, but theirs uses biodiesel. She says she thinks that theoretically, their plastic would biodegrade in 20 years as opposed to other plastics that would deteriorate after 500 years.

So far they have used their plastic to create plant pots and door stoppers.

(Story by Tony Nguyen, Ozarks First)