Duygu Yılmaz made it onto Junior Chamber International's (JCI) "Ten Outstanding Young Persons of the World" list in 2019 thanks to her unusual work: turning olive pits into biodegradable plastic. Three years on, she runs a company worth $30 million (TL 443.06 million) and provides raw materials for industries seeking biodegradable options.
Yılmaz, a food engineer and a lecturer at Istanbul Aydın University, hails planned regulations that bring incentives to "green" companies and says bioplastics can be used to help further cut taxes for companies who want to demonstrate that they are "socially conscious."
She has come a long way since she conceived the idea of converting olive pits into plastic, something she was inspired to do by her father. Her father, suffering from stomach problems, was swallowing the pits, believing they would cure him. Yılmaz decided to research the actual benefits of the pits. With an amateur lab she set up at a flat she shared with her friends in university, she launched her research. Her work gained momentum after she received an award in 2019, and she went on to establish a company.
The company provides the raw material for a number of industries by using olive waste that has been converted into biodegradable plastic. The polymer material is used in a diverse array of production fields, from electronics, food packaging and the production of toothbrushes to coat hangers and flower pots. Yılmaz works in partnership with a textile company for producing polymers. Olive pit waste and other food-based waste are combined to manufacture "a plant-based leather," which contains 70% natural material, the highest in the world.
The raw material the company produces starts to break down within three months once thrown away and in about one year, it decomposes entirely.
Yılmaz says waste from olive processing and olive oil production amounted to 500,000 tons every year in Turkey and 6 million tons in the world. She says the pomace is disposed of via burning, a method that causes carbon monoxide emissions 12 times higher than coal. She added that the practice of pomace burning was a contributor to emissions affecting the ozone layer, and its disposal would be regulated soon. "This is a useless byproduct that harms the environment, but we have an opportunity to turn it into useful material," she told Anadolu Agency (AA) on Monday.
Finding new a use for olive pits in a country rich in olive production was also the purpose of professor Nazım Şekeroğlu of Gaziantep University in Turkey. The biology professor recently managed to convert the pits into a new flavor for traditional Turkish coffee. The caffeine-free and entirely herbal coffee may also help people with health problems and offers a new option for those who cannot drink regular coffee, Şekeroğlu said. Like Yılmaz, Şekeroğlu was inspired by people consuming olive pits and contributing to the fight against the disposal of pomace from olive oil factories. He told AA on Saturday that the olive pits had a bitter taste but the coffee, which also contains cinnamon and turpentine, removes this bitter taste while still preserving the high ratio of powdered olive pits.