On the bench of a school laboratory, milk changes its face. From being a daily food, what ends up in the glass at breakfast or in the cup of cappuccino becomes material to be observed, manipulated and understood. In Cisterna di Latina a seventh grade class took an everyday material, milk, and used it to talk about plastic, recycling and polymer chemistry. The students of II A of the Pliny the Elder lower secondary school they won the National Federchimica Youth Award 2025-2026Plastic category, with the project “Plastic 2.0: from waste to infinite resource”.
The work will be rewarded on September 14th at the National Museum of Science and Technology in Milan. At the center of the project is an experiment on bioplastic from milka journey on polymeric materials, data collected by students through surveys and a comparison with a local company that works on the chemical recycling of plastic.
Plastic explained starting from casein
The most concrete part of the project was the creation in the laboratory of a bioplastic derived from caseinthe milk protein. Treated with an acid, casein can separate from the liquid part and form a moldable mass. It is a fairly well-known educational experiment, useful for showing how an organic substance can change its structure and behavior through a chemical reaction. Casein plastic, after all, has a history before modern plastic and in the past was used for small objects such as buttons, combs and accessories.
In the case of Pliny the Elder, however, the experiment served above all to show what macromolecules are and why the word “plastic” brings together very different materials. Plastic remains comfortable, resistant, economical, present everywhere. Precisely for this reason it becomes complicated when it must be collected, separated, recycled or replaced. Getting your hands on a material helps you understand it better than a definition learned by heart.
The project, coordinated by professor Patrizia Montellicombined Science and Civic Education. The students also built a digital poster in the form of a newspaper, with multimedia content accessible via QR code and statistical data collected through surveys prepared by the students themselves. A useful choice, because the topic of plastic also concerns habits: what we buy, how we differentiate, how much we really know about the materials we use every day.
Comparison with the chemical recycling of PET
The Plasta Rei by Cisternaa company active in the chemical recycling of PET. The students were able to compare themselves with Luana Sannathe company’s expert, and approach a topic that usually remains outside the classroom: what happens to plastic after use.
PET is one of the most common materials in food packaging, especially bottles and containers. Mechanical recycling has known limitations: with each step the material can lose quality and become less suitable for some uses. Chemical recycling tries to intervene further upstream, returning the polymer to usable components to obtain new material with characteristics closer to virgin plastic. The technology is interesting, although it must always be evaluated on an industrial scale, with attention to costs, energy consumption and overall impact.
For a middle school class, this connection with the territory makes the work less abstract. On the one hand there is bioplastic obtained from casein in the laboratory. On the other there are plants, supply chains, patents, secondary raw materials and post-consumer plastic. Two different levels, placed on the same path without confusing them.
Because the project makes sense at school
The Federchimica Giovani Award was created to introduce primary and lower secondary schools to chemistry and STEM disciplines. The Plastics category asks students to think about materials, uses, impact and innovation. In this case the work of II A brought together laboratory, research, communication and territory.
Pliny the Elder had already obtained recognition in the 2022-2023 edition, in the section Basic chemistrywith the “Solfo” project. This new victory shows continuity in the way of working: experiments, observation, digital tools used to document, contacts with local production realities.
The most interesting point remains the measurement. There bioplastic from milk it does not become the solution to the global plastic problem. It is a way to understand that materials have a chemical history, a cycle, a cost, a possible reuse. And that talking about sustainability at school works better when you start from something you can see, touch, make mistakes, redo.
II A won by starting from a simple question: what can become a material that we already know? The milk, in this case, did the rest. Also because chemistry, when it comes out of the book, tends to be remembered.
