A Montana middle schooler recently won a national award for her invention of a new type of bioplastic – a plastic made from renewable materials.
Rye Rost is a 13-year-old eighth grader at Baker Junior High in southeastern Montana. She recently won second place in the technology division of the Thermo Fisher Scientific Junior Innovators Challenge in Washington D.C. It’s the premiere STEM research competition for middle schoolers around the country.
For her project, Rye made bioplastics out of bananas and plantains and compared them. She’s been working on the project for four years.
“With the bananas, I tried it, and it was a bunch of mush, and then this year, I used plantains and a different method and made my vinyl plastic,” Rost said.
Rye started experimenting with bioplastics when she learned about the problem of plastic pollution. She has more ideas to make her product better, with the goal of it becoming a solution for the plastic problem.
“I want to mass produce my bioplastic, and have it be the new sustainable single-use plastic,” Rost said.
Rye was one of 30 finalists from around the country who went to the nation’s capital to participate in the competition.
