UNAIR NEWS – Tamansuruh Village, Glagah sub-district, Banyuwangi Regency is one of the villages with high potential of banana producers.  There are various products such as banana chips, sale, and other products. Unfortunately, the high production of banana processing is not followed with its waste treatment. The banana skin scattered in various places.

According to the Head of Tamansari village, Nursamsi, most of Tamansuruh village people tend to dispose of banana skin waste. Most banana skin waste is from Kepok banana. There are some who use it as animal feed, but the results have not overcome the amount of waste that exists.

“In Tamansuruh Village has a group of PKK  with active mothers and often hold meetings and discuss the issue of banana skin waste, but from meeting to meeting they can not find a real solution,” said Lurah Nursamsi.

Driven by the facts and the efforts to provide a solution, five students of Universitas Airlangga PSDKU Banyuwangi make innovations to empower the community by converting banana skin waste into economic value goods, namely a face mask.

The five students of Accounting department PSDKU UA Program conducted a research for 2017 Student Creativity Program(PKM) with a proposal titled “Optimizing the Potential Kepok Banana Skin ( Musa paradisiaca ) for Beauty Masks as Effort to Empower Creative Economy in PKK of Tamansuruh Village, Banyuwangi Regency. “This program has succeeded in attracting the attention of the Directorate General of Higher Education and qualified to get the fund of PKM program development in 2017.

The five students are Nilna Firdaus Anggraini (chairman / 2016), Suaibatul Islamiyah (2016), Nur Jannah (2016), Miranti Nareswari (2014), and Romzi Kharisanto (2014). The goal of the five students is to improve the welfare of Tamansuruh village, reduce unemployment rate, provide entrepreneurship training facilities, improve student creativity, raise the economic value of banana skin waste so that it can help increasing the locals’ income.

Activities include program planning, dissemination of banana skin benefits into a beauty mask, training and practice of banana skin treatment into a beauty mask, utilization of beauty mask from banana skin waste in adolescents in Tamansuruh Village and closed by doing activity evaluation. (*)

Author: Siti Mufaidah

Editor: Bambang Edy Santosa