With the desire to contribute to the environmental protection and help farmers earn additional income, Nguyen Lai Hoang Thu and Vu Dang Khoa, the two eighth graders of Duc Tri School in HCM City have made paper bags from banana trunks and used cooking oil.

Khoa and Thu are making paper bags

In Vietnam, banana trees are easy to grow. After bananas are taken away, banana trunks will be felled to make room for other small banana plants to grow.

“We decided to implement a project on making paper bag from banana trunks. The project is in the first phase of development. If succeeding, we will start up,” Khoa said.

With the desire to contribute to the environmental protection and help farmers earn additional income, Nguyen Lai Hoang Thu and Vu Dang Khoa, the two eighth graders of Duc Tri School in HCM City have made paper bags from banana trunks and used cooking oil.

To make paper bags, the students have to prepare banana trunks cut into small pieces.

After that, they boil water and NaOH (inorganic compound, greasy, used in many industries such as paper, aluminum smelting, textile dyeing, soap, detergent and artificial silk) in sufficient amount for one hour and then let it get cold.

After this stage, the students filter NaOH to ensure safety when using it by sorting water and solid parts separately. The solid part is washed with cold water many times.

Then they mix water and solid part again, grind the mixture well. They need to be sure that the pH is 7 (this is the neutral environment). Finally, they mold paper and dry it.

According to Thu, the paper can be exposed to the sun or wind. However, it is necessary to watch the drying process to be sure that papers do not get too dry. If the process is too long, the paper will wrinkle.

If the trunks are used to make paper right after they are cut down, the paper will be white. If using dry trunks, the paper will be dark.

After making papers, the students create paper bags. In order to make the bags waterproof, they apply used cooking oil on the bags.

“The paper bags with no cooking oil applied on the surface can be used to contain dry food. After the papers are covered with cooking oil, they can be used to contain vegetables and fruits,” Khoa explained.

The weak point of the paper bags is that they can get moldy and attract insects. Therefore, they are thinking of solutions that help preserve the bags as long as possible. 

Mai Lan

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