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Blog Post #3

My Site Visit

Have you ever heard of a place in Connecticut called Shelton? I didn’t know about Shelton until I figured out that Novamont was in Shelton. Novamont is a leading manufacturer of biocompostable products. Dan Martens, the Vice President of Novamont North America, was kind enough to give me a tour and explain what the company does.

Mr. Martens explained that Novamont is headquartered in Northern Italy. The company was originally a leader in traditional plastic manufacturing, but over the years has switched completely to biocompostable materials. Mr. Martens showed me a number of videos as part of the tour.  From watching the videos, I learned a lot about the differences between bioplastic, biodegradable, and biocompostable materials. I learned that Novamont makes a material called Mater-Bi (made out of resins and plant oils), which is then used to make biocompostable products such as shopping bags, bio bags to collect pet waste, and even ice-cream cups!  I also learned that biocompostable products are widely used in places like Milan, Italy. We have some catching up to do in the United States! However, grocery stores like Trader Joe’s and Mrs. Green’s have been using these biocompostable bags. Next time I visit these stores, I will be sure to check them out.

At the end of the tour, Mr. Martens gave me a number of samples to take home with me, including biocompostable pet waste bags, cups, ziploc bags, shopping bags and a food scraps bin.  Mr. Martens left me with some ideas as well. He mentioned a school in Shelton, CT which has a no-trash lunch program. Students are required to bring in reusable lunch boxes (no plastic bags) and all the food scraps go into a compostable bin.  Perhaps we can do this in Scarsdale in the future!

Now that I am done with my site visit, the next step for me is do an interview. I am really excited to start it.

This is a picture of Dan Martens and me:

Blog Post #4

My Interviews

After the site visit, the next step is to do an interview. I wanted to reach out to experts in the field and I found two people. I wanted to interview them both instead of choosing one to interview. They were also in different parts of the country so I facetimed them.

The first person I interviewed was Geoffrey Coates. He is a professor at Cornell University and does Chemistry & Biology. I learned that he makes bioplastic fuel cells for cars. Carbon dioxide is one of the gases that is part of global warming. When we put oil in our cars, it makes a lot of carbon dioxide. Mr. Coates found a way to trap the carbon dioxide inside the fuel cells so it won’t go into the atmosphere. I think it is really amazing that he found a way to do that!

The second person I interviewed was Ann Blake. Her job is labeling products. She has to know exactly what’s in the product otherwise can’t label it. Over the course of her career, some companies are open to Dr. Blake labeling their products, while some aren’t. One example is that the electronics company has been arguing with her for 15 years! Can you believe that? Now the electronics company is finally coming around and have included strategies  like recycling. 

I am really inspired by Dr. Coates’s and Dr. Blake’s work. I am happy that I did this topic for Capstone, because if I didn’t I wouldn’t meet these wonderful people.