Summer

Sun, swimming pool, unique, marvellous moments, excellent weather, relaxing moments… I could be like that all day. 

The word itself sounds so so well, just hearing it and a smile appears immediately in your face, a strange feeling runs over your body and you just want to be on the village, the beach, the parties… 

Just one month and some days and we will be free, we will go to the beach; waking up at the hotel, having huge breakfasts, eating a lot, going to the sea to taking a bath, looking like a crab because of the sunburns, having a walk along the promenade; when we are on the beach our only worry is getting in time to the hotel to have lunch or dinner, nothing else matters because on the beach worries, disappear. 

Then, going to your village… I don´t know what villages have that they make us feel like another person. we are all the year waiting for summer to see our friends, to stay until three in the morning playing cards in the main square on a normal day, to go to the swimming pool, to take the bike to go to the nearest village, to wake up at twelve o´clock in the morning, to eat sweets, to wait for the local festival, to try to convince your parents to take you by car to the celebrations of other villages, to sleep the whole next day, to speak about teachers (not always well), the music, singing, dancing, laughing, crying, talking, shouting…

Then you notice that the summer is ending, parties are finishing, tourists start to go back to their city, people who live far away leave. The worst moment arrives, the day we when have to go. I can say it is the saddest day of the year. 

People who do not have a village do not know this sensation, these feelings. I mean, it is impossible to explain all the things, all those moments, the feelings, it is impossible.

A Future without Plastic

Have you ever thought about how many plastic bags reach the ocean every year?

I can tell it to you, 8 million tonnes every year, and this number is supposed to continue growing if we continue consuming such a huge amount of plastic bags. This alarming numbers don’t receive the importance that they should have, because we aren’t aware that in a few years these effects are going to make the world worse and the situation will be irreversible if steps are not taken.

However, some great minds and scientists are concerned with the situation and they use their intelligent and knowledge to make the world a better place. This is the case of a group of students of a biotechnology engineering degree of the Faculty of Chemistry of the Autonomous University of Querétaro. This brilliant group of students has developed a project whose purpose is to eliminate the plastic bags in the world, and to avoid using them, they have created plastic bags that are biodegradable.

These biodegradable bags will replace the plastic bags, but the idea is that they will have the same function and resistance as the plastic bags and, due to the materials that they are created of, the time of deterioration will also be reduced. However, this is not the only advantage: their materials are so innovative that in the case these bags reach the ocean, animals will be able to eat them without resulting damaged, which is an important fact taking into account the huge number of animals that die every year due to this waste.

Another interesting fact is that, although you may think that these bags will be very expensive due to the materials, that is not true. These bags are created from food waste produced by the agri-food industry. And as these materials are so cheap, the bags won’t be expensive, because the goal of this project is to reduce the contamination of plastic bags in the ocean and to help the environment, not to create a source of income with it.

Although the project has not reached the manufacturing process yet, the group of students has great expectations with this project and they hope that in a few years all the plastic bags will be replaced by their invention.

I hope that this project will be launched in a few years and until that date we all must reduce our plastic bags and waste.