Make Potato Plastic!

Step 4 Use it !

So by now you should have a glob of messy starch plastic resin that is ready to be molded, injected, shaped, and formed into anything you want. A major advantage to this plastic, besides the fact that it does not use petroleum, is that it is also 100% biodegradable! That means in the right conditions, it will decompose in months instead of thousands of years. Its time to get creative and figure out things we can use it for.
Possibilities include:
-Plates and dinnerware
-Plastic bags
-Cups
-Bowls
-Pens
-And whatever else you can imagine...

a video showing a piece of colored plastic that is very flexible and strong (the tear in it is from drying)

Comments

[jgervacio]

i want to use this thing for our investigatory project i hope u will give us permission because u did great, so much.

[delaneypratt]

When the plastic dries is it cracked up? and also is it hard? and one more thing is it paintable?

[hsm_girl_94]

Amazing! I just wanna ask how can you prove that the plastic is really biodegradable?? Please reply :-) thanks

[dpagaduan]

you just put the stupid thing in a pit and after f ucking days it will disappear get it or you are just a slowminded?

[Brandon121233]

make something out of it, put it in dirt and wait 5 months

[etan1]

I have been trying with this experiment but it is not working. Everytime I dry it in an oven for 2 hours at 50 degree Celsius, the results turn out to become sticky and soft after a few minutes. Can I know how to fix this problem? Thanks.

[Agat]

As a dye, I have used Easter eggs colorant :) It has worked perfectly well. The almost final product (my plastic cookies are still in the oven) I have obtained is transparent orange. It looks really nice :) 

[Lycantiger]

Can this stuff melt, so you can mould it after dryng it?

[shytel]

...dizs isz very helpful....tnx huh.!

[rey95]

You rock man! my true name is Lee min hoo from korea...

[fashionizta143]

hi. i would like to ask a question about this experiment.
could other starches be used?
how about starch from root crops?
lets say cassava?
would that work?

thanks a lot in advance!
great job!
very helpful!
^_

[shytel]

u can use ...almost all root crops..

[Brandon121233]

yes it would, cassava starch is also know as tapioca starch, which gave me the best results of any starch I have tried

[Dayi]

Hi Brandon I really liked this of making potato plastic... I tried to do it but I don't know what Im doing wrong because it doesn't look like yours.... I didn't use 100% Vegetable Liquid Glycerin I used normal Glycerin, was that the problem??? I also used an other type of starch. When I'm mixing it, it starts getting like gel but it never turns to plastic :( Do you know what I'm doing wrong?? help please.

[starberry_lov3r]

i need serious help plz reply how long did it take it to biodegrade around a week or so and the styrofoam plastic does it even biodegrade and how long help!!!!!!!!1

[Brandon121233]

depends on the environment its in, in a moist compost pile probably 2 weeks, a warm glass of water a week, and dry soil I'm guessing maybe a month or so. What Styrofoam are you talking about? Normal Styrofoam wont biodegrade fully for hundreds of years.

[trixpan]

Hi Brandon, this is AWESOME. May I ask few questions? how transparent it is? Is the blueish plastic film the original "final look" without additional pigments? how does it react with temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius? and how fast does it decompose? I want to replace a broken plastic lamp cover from kitchen rangehood but sadly enough the piece in no longer available from the rangehood manufacturer so I now thinking about moulding some decent plastic at home. :-) I thank you in advance

[Brandon121233]

Depending upon how you make it, it can be perfectly transparent or opaque (and no the blue is from food coloring)
This stuff could sit in an oven at 250C and not even crisp/melt, it is very heat resistant
It depends upon the environment its in...in the ground maybe 1 week, as a cup-one serving, as a lamp shade in a generally dry area-years probably

check out my new instructable if you want some really awesome results out of it : Potato Plastic 2.0

[Rockerdog]

Hello! This is very inventive as far as the whole green thing goes. I can so dig that. However, if I were to attempt this to create a mold for chocolate, how effectively would you say this is? More importantly, would you rate this appropriate for containing food or temperatures both warmer and colder than human skin or room temperature? If you think it's fine for food, I could try it for molds and tell you how it turns out. Keep rocking!

[bmlbytes]

It should be OK for food considering it is completely made of food

[Brandon121233]

OK I finally added pictures and video of plastic samples, hope this shows a little what to expect... ( some of the samples are from when I was first perfecting the technique of getting it to dry evenly, those samples are the "raisin" ones)

[DarthMike]

Hi, I tried this over the weekend and it worked well; however, I'm trying to make presentation covers for a small architectural office and the amount of flexibility is a problem. You write in the science wrap-up that if you eliminate the glycerine that it would be hard and crack, what about if one were to reduce the amount of glycerine? I'm looking for it to cure a bit harder so that it will be usable as a really heavy cover stock weight sheet. Any advice? I'm going to try further refining, but any advice you have would be great. If I have some good results I'll write back again. Thanks for this project! Great stuff!

[Brandon121233]

Yes the amount of glycerin determines the pliability and flexibility of the plastic, however the more flexible something is the less hard it becomes and vice versa (usually). So yes if you want it to be stiff, then add only a very small ammount of glycerin.

[SHIFT!]

How strong, exactly, is this plastic? I mean, I know that it is fantastically biodegradable, not to mention safe for the environment, but if I were to use it as a substitution for other plastics, how would it compete?

[Brandon121233]

Honestly right now it wouldn't for most applications. However it is being used for stuff like tableware, and disposable containers. With further reasearch I think it would be possible to greatly reduce its hygroscopic properties. The most important thing is that its a step in the right direction and could lead to more promising materials.

[redsox92]

wow this is amazing im gonna try it next week (cant do it today cause my brothers g/f is over and he'd get pissed off at me)theres pretty much endless possibilites that you can do with this