Puerto Rican Students Found a Way to Turn Banana Peels Into Biodegradable Plastic and the Island’s Landfills May Never Be the Same

A chemistry professor from a small town known for its banana farms and a team of three undergraduate students at the Universidad del Sagrado Corazón in Puerto Rico have developed a formula that turns banana peels into a biodegradable material capable of replacing the plastic used in everyday shopping bags. The research, led by Professor Yérika Febus Ortiz of the university’s School of Health and Sciences, combines banana peel extract with water, starch, glycerol and an acidic component to produce a material that leaves behind no toxic residue and breaks down naturally after use.

According to El Nuevo Día, the project began as a personal one for Febus Ortiz, who grew up surrounded by banana farms in the town of Corozal. She said the idea came directly from watching organic waste accumulate on the farms around her hometown, and that when she began searching for a thesis topic, the formula presented itself as a way to turn that waste into something useful.

A Local Problem With a Potentially Island-Wide Solution

Puerto Rico’s waste management challenges provided the urgent backdrop for this research. The most recent solid waste characterization study, endorsed by the Department of Natural Resources and the Environment and published in January 2024, confirms that organic residue makes up the largest share of what ends up in the island’s landfills. The 2022 agricultural census, managed by the United States Department of Agriculture, counted a harvest of 180,704 bananas in Puerto Rico alone, a figure that does not account for imported units.

Student researcher Génesis Gómez Vázquez described the initiative as having the potential to meaningfully reduce the volume of solid and organic waste piling up in Puerto Rico’s landfills, while simultaneously producing a material that could cut down on plastic pollution across the island. Febus Ortiz added that the formula would not necessarily depend on a continuous harvest, noting that in the event of a hurricane damaging the banana crop, the production process could continue using the banana plant itself as a substitute for the peel, keeping that organic material out of landfills entirely.

Beyond Bags: A Formula With Unexpected Range

The team has been refining the formula since October of last year, and what began as a project focused on shopping bags has revealed possibilities the researchers did not initially anticipate. Febus Ortiz discovered that increasing the thickness of the material produces something considerably harder, opening up the possibility of manufacturing biodegradable utensils like forks and spoons from the same base formula.

She added that the formula could likely be replicated using other organic materials similar to the banana, though her preference remains the green banana given its widespread consumption on the island. The team plans to conduct a rigorous series of tests before moving toward commercialization, including evaluations of elasticity, biodegradability, humidity resistance and temperature tolerance, as well as a deeper study of the material’s molecular and chemical composition. They also plan to build a prototype shopping bag to test how much weight the material can hold under real conditions.

Closing the Circle Between Farms, Restaurants and Consumers

If the project scales successfully, Febus Ortiz envisions a collaborative economic model that connects the food industry directly to the production of biodegradable materials. She described a future partnership with restaurants that feature plantain-based dishes, where those businesses would supply banana peels in exchange for receiving the finished biodegradable product, creating a closed loop between food production and sustainable manufacturing.

That circular approach also positions the research as a potential response to Puerto Rico’s Law to Prohibit the Sale and Use of Single-Use Plastics, which was set to take effect in July after years of delays. Febus Ortiz argued that the law alone does not resolve the underlying landfill problem, because replacing one disposable product with another that still ends up in a dump changes very little. What she is proposing, she explained, is a material that can be actively collected and biodegraded, attacking the waste problem from multiple directions at once rather than simply shifting it from one container to another.

The students on the team say the experience shifted something in how they approach the world. Yimelís Aristud Matos said it showed her that science could be a tool for building something genuinely better, and Lee Ann Nieves Rosario said it had opened her eyes to the idea that the most useful solutions are often the ones hiding in the most ordinary places.