Firstly we will discuss about hemp plastic, which is core element of our innovation. fun fact: henry ford made his first car in 1941 from hemp plastic. this is perhaps the proof that hemp cellulosic fibres can be used to make plastic. sachets are small packets in which mostly liquid, sometimes solid products are sold in small volumes, which can be consumed by the lower classes of the society and now we see that we are in a dire need to change the architecture of the sachets. so what we have come up within this prototype. the most essential property plastic provides is hydrophobicity. so our first goal is to achieve this property and that is why we chose hemp plastic, a kind of bio-plastic which can be prepared from hemp cellulosic fibres. cellulose is the most easily available, biodegradable, natural, hydrophobic polymer but then, why cellulose extracted specifically from hemp, someone might ask. the total cellulosic content of cotton lintern is higher than that of hemp fibers. then why hemp cellulose? the answer is simple. the hemp composites (composite of hemp plastic and jute in our case) are stronger, cheaper and lighter than even steel plus, it is also biodegradable. also, hemp is also a weed and flourishes without the use of pesticides (having few natural enemies) and grows so fast that it literally leaves other plants in the shade. so, hemp is also very easy to cultivate and high amount of hemp cellulose can be extracted easily from these ease growing weeds, cutting down the overall cost of production of hemp plastic. what we did is that we cultivated hemp and extracted cellulose from it then converted the cellulose to cellulose acetate since cellulose is not a plastic but cellulose acetate is and this cellulose acetate is then fed into a extruder and hemp fibre flex was infused into it. this "hemp plastic" was then moulded into a sheet of 20 micron. the hemp plastic sheet is then sandwiched with a jute fabric which makes the bio-composite material which will be used in future instead of plastic. also, the animals which swallow the plastics greater than 40 microns thickness, undergo serious health issues. therefore, normal plastics have a limit of minimum 40 microns but the material we are using is bio- plastic so we don’t have to think about that. so we can make plastic as thin as 20 micron or even lesser, the main aim behind it is to stop the moisture and for that, 20 micron is enough. if the plastic is so thin, would it be strong enough? that’s where the jute fibers come into play. the next layer is of jute fibers. jute fibers provide the tensile strength and provides a skeleton to the whole structure. jute fibers is available in abundance in this country and the presence of jute fiber instead of thicker plastic actually helps in cutting the cost. the final layer is of recycled paper which is just necessary for branding, decoration and labeling purposes.
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