Mechanical and Morphology Studies of Bioplastic-Based Banana Peels

The limitation of oil has been an intermittent worry in plastic production nowadays. One of the sources of plastic production is fuel. However, the synthetic plastic cause harm to the people and the environment. It has contributed as one of the major cause pollution to the surface of earth. Therefore, new alternative for the production of plastic have been studied. This study is conducted mainly to develop a bioplastic from food waste, banana peels. The additives used together with banana peels are natural-based materials such as corn starch, potato starch and sage while the chemical-based materials used consist of hydrochloric acid and sodium hydroxide. The addition of glycerol is used to increase the plasticity characteristic. From tensile properties results, it indicates that the banana peels bioplastic with chemical-based show high tensile strength and elongation at break compared to natural-based. However, the modulus of elasticity of bioplastic with natural-based retrieved the highest results. The scanning electron microscope (SEM) of tensile fracture surface shows that the additive is well dispersed with banana peels as matrix with good bonding and better adhesion.