Tag: plastic

Plastic Chocolate – 's Plastic Chocolate Recipe – Italian Cuisine

»Plastic Chocolate - Misya's Plastic Chocolate Recipe


Let's start with the white plastic chocolate: prepare the glucose syrup by putting water in a saucepan with half the sugar (in this case, about 30 g), bringing to a boil and cooking until the mixture becomes "syrupy" (it will take about 5 -10 minutes), then add it to the glucose.

Chop the chocolate and melt it (in the microwave or in a bain marie), then add the syrup and the remaining icing sugar 8 (always about 30 g).

Move the mixture on the work surface sprinkled with powdered sugar and work it quickly by hand until you get a fairly compact stick (if it starts to release cocoa butter you have to cool it, then you have to continue to work it in a bowl inserted in another bowl. containing ice), then wrap it in cling film and let it rest in the fridge for at least 30 minutes before using it.

Proceed in the same way for the dark chocolate: prepare the syrup, add the glucose, then incorporate them into the melted chocolate and add the remaining sugar (in this case it is about 15 g).

Move to the work surface and work quickly, then let it rest in the fridge.

The plastic chocolate is ready, you just have to use it for all your creations.

To prepare plastic chocolate roses, take small pieces of mixture and crush them between your fingers, shaping them in a drop shape to form the petals, starting with smaller pieces, which you will roll up to create the inner part, and continuing with gradually larger petals.

And here are my plastic chocolate roses, prepared with both dark and light dough.

Plastic or glass? What bottle do we choose? – Italian Cuisine

Plastic or glass? What bottle do we choose?


The water it is the most precious asset that man can have available. Without water there is no life. For this you must constantly take care of it. But what is the best path to take once you want to buy it?

Choose the one in the bottle? But plastic or glass? The water that flows directly from the tap at home? Or the one supplied by the "water boxes"? In short, the possibilities are there, just understand which is the best and be able to orient yourself.

But for this time let's focus on the often conflicting choice between plastic and glass bottles, a much discussed topic in everyday life, which emerges when we have to decide what to bring into our homes. Both glass and plastic bottles are suitable for maintaining the chemical-biological characteristics of the water while protecting taste and safety.

One ancient, the other modern

Glass is an ancient material: the origins of the bottle in this material dates back to 1500 BC, so much so that it seems that the most remote containers are attributed to the time of the pharaohs. However, it was from the mid-eighteenth century that bottles began to spread, with the increase in the production of quality wine or the invention of Champagne in France, which necessarily had to be stored in glass. Plastic, on the other hand, is a "modern" material: its century is certainly the 1900s, even more so the 60s, when it asserts itself in everyday life as well as in fashion, art and design. In this way, glass is overcome by this material, which is cheaper and easier to transport, and plastic bottles take over, making glass water almost a niche product, used above all in luxury catering. Contrary to what many think, plastic water is no less safe. PET bottles, if stored in the right way, do not in fact release harmful substances to the water.

pros and cons

Glass is a high quality packaging material, which manages to preserve the flavor and effervescence of a liquid, as well as being very safe from a health point of view. It can be disposed of through separate collection or, even better, the bottles can be returned to the seller and used again for the conservation and marketing of water. There in fact, a glass bottle can be reused even more than 30 times with the “returnable vacuum” system.

Plastic bottles, on the other hand, are much lighter as well as more manageable, moreover they are unbreakable and after use they can simply be crumpled and thrown away, without needing to be stored and returned to the store.

Today, attention to environmental sustainability and packaging and concerns about the use of plastic and the risks involved in using it are making a return to glass. In fact, plastic takes up to 1000 years to completely degrade, and if it is true that today we have increasingly effective recycling techniques (which however require an important investment in energy terms), we cannot forget that currently, in Italy, more than half of the plastic that is thrown away is not properly sorted, and then swells the mountains of waste that crowd our landfills. Seas and oceans are also invaded by single-use plastics, and this has serious repercussions on marine flora and fauna: all topics that cannot leave us indifferent.

The health risks

Unfortunately, the microplastics that pollute water have also entered food chains. We can't see them, but they show up invisible on our plates through both food and drink. If these are ingested by fish, molluscs and crustaceans, laboratory analyzes have also found them in mineral waters and soft drinks, honey and beer, all contaminated by the types of plastic most used in packaging. Using table salt alone, an adult risks ingesting about 2,000 pieces of microplastics in a year.
Reducing plastic is certainly possible, but to reduce the environmental impact it is also essential to reuse all that can be recovered by transforming PET, the polymer used for beverage bottles. It is a "noble" material which, if collected and treated properly, is infinitely recyclable.

In an Indian school, lessons are paid for with recycled plastic – Italian Cuisine

In an Indian school, lessons are paid for with recycled plastic


In an Indian school, students pay for their lessons with plastic waste to be recycled and receive innovative professional educational training in environmental education

In Dispur, the capital of the Assam region in the north east ofIndia, there is a truly innovative school, the Akshar Forum school, which is laying the foundations for a possible new and innovative method of teaching in Indian public schools and beyond. First of all Akshar students, instead of paying their tuition, are asked to deliver 25 plastic items a week for recycling (for a total of about 10 thousand objects per month), coming from household waste or those of the neighborhood. But the particularity of this school, one sustainability best practice which has attracted the attention of the international media press does not end there. In fact, at the Akshar Forum school, people are taught to respect the environment and to recycle, but at the same time they guarantee aprofessional environmental education and unconventional teaching methods are adopted, also aimed at combating child labor.

A new school concept, to save young people and the environment

According to the local non-governmental organization, the city of Dispur alone, which has just over a million inhabitants, produces almost 40 tons of waste per day; as if that weren't enough, the local population has the habit of burning much of the plastic used, causing highly toxic fumes. An alarming situation, which drew the attention of Mukhtar & Sarma, the young couple who in 2016 raised funds and financing from private donors to manage this school project. The goal, from the beginning, was to give life to a free school accessible to all that could stem the social and ecological problems of the area as much as possible, at the same time laying the foundations for an experimental and potentially replicable initiative elsewhere. The school, completely free, has included a recycling center, but the parents were reluctant to make a contribution in terms of household waste, precisely because they preferred to burn it at home. From there came the idea of ​​introducing a mandatory tax which consisted of either a payment in money or the delivery of plastic waste. This policy of alternative tuition quickly took hold, so much so that it was quickly accepted by all parents.

Starting from the bottom to form the eco warriors of the future

The school currently has over a hundred students, aged between 4 and 15. Many of them, before starting school, were laborers at nearby stone quarries, where they made about $ 2.50 a day. Mukhtar & Sarma, in addition to the ecological cause, also had at heart the one linked to fight against child labor and in this sense too they have come up with an unconventional solution. They devised a one-of-a-kind learning model by recruiting kids who could tutor the children and establishing a reward system for students that consisted of fake banknotes to use in local stores to buy snacks, clothes, shoes or toys. . The monetary incentive, which goes hand in hand with the achievement of academic results, is proving to be a powerful motivator for the community. In this way, children are motivated to go to school and welcome it with interest professional environmental training which is made available to them; the students, in fact, attend carpentry and electronics workshops, learn to install solar panels and, above all, carry out outdoor recycling, for example transforming waste plastic supplied by households into ecological bricks. Thanks to this project, the children have convinced their families not to burn plastic anymore, and in general in the community there is a greater awareness of environmental issues and a greater sense of responsibility. In short, the success and positive impact of Akshar's school model have been such that the government has decided to entrust Mukhtar & Sarma with five other schools, and it is not excluded that this is only the beginning of a great change at the national level. .

Whatever happens in India, this initiative is the demonstration that, thanks to a few simple school and training initiatives, much can be done to transform the new generations into eco warriors champions of the environment and sustainability.

Photo: Indian plastic recycling school_dhakatribune.jpg

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