Banana consumption in Switzerland has been growing steadily for decades. In 2019 alone, 97,000 tons of the fruit, which originates from tropical regions, were imported. Many thousands of tons of it end up in the trash as organic waste. Shouldn’t the fruit be put to more holistic use? This was the question at the beginning of a research project called KUORI (Finnish for peel), developed in the scope of a bachelor’s thesis at the Institute of Industrial Design at HGK Basel. It investigates whether banana peels are suitable as a starting material for the development of a bio-based plastic and which products could be made from them. In cooperation with experts from relevant disciplines (in particular the Plastics Institute of the FHNW), numerous experiments on material development and manufacturing processes were carried out. It could be proven that banana peels are suitable for different applications depending on the processing: in the textile sector, as a sustainable single use object, in the packaging sector as well as in 3D printing. After KUORI also received international attention, the author decided to further advance her research on material development with an interdisciplinary team. The research work started in September 2021 at the Institute of Polymer Engineering and is now focused on the development of a marketable shoe sole. A key issue here is the avoidance of microplastics that are released into the environment through abrasion in conventional soles.