Thread from Banana Trunk Giving a Biodegradable Alternative to Plastics

BEGUSARAI: Living on their beloved President A P J Abdul Kalam’s advise to act accordingly towards the realisation of your dreams are two young students of local Barauni Refinery DAV School here. Rahul Gaurav of class 12 and Vivek Kumar of class 9 have won nationwide accolades for their project intended at extracting thread from banana trunk. The project aims at giving a biodegradable alternative to plastics that still continue to threaten the environment no end.

According to school principal A C Jain, the project submitted by the duo has been successful in cutting a substantial roadway towards providing a substitute to highly popular but least eco-friendly polythene carrybags under circulation in the market these days. He said the project has won several top honours for itself in various national-level science exhibitions, including the CBSE-INTEL science exhibitions, held from right at the zonal level under Allahabad zone in Lucknow last year to the national level held at DPS Ghaziabad in October 2004.

“The project again stole the limelight at the National Science Talent Discovery Fair held in Anna University, Chennai, in December last year as it was adjudged the best among the 157 projects submitted under the environmental science category,” Jain said and added that the potential the project carries with itself can well be understood from the fact that its feasibility is currently under test in biotechnology department of IIT Kharagpur.

The duo, who were awarded by former ISRO chairman U S Rao for the project, have, meanwhile, been invited to attend two months’ training workshop by Intel in June-July this year at some premier research institute in India to be decided by the organisation.

According to Jain, J J K Ambastha and Amit Kumar, guides and teachers of Rahul and Vivek, see in the duo an extra normal awareness towards small things in life, the key to innovations.

Source

Times News Network, March 10, 2005.

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