All of the above websites have one thing in common.
Environment friendly disposable cutlery!
Traditionally all the disposal cutlery is made out aluminium, plastic, paper and corrugated fibreboard. Plastic is heavily used to manufacture disposable cutlery amongst the materials listed above. Now, it is not a new phenomena that plastic is not a sustainable material. Hence other alternatives are being implied to cut down the usage of plastic. Aluminium could be an alternative but recycling of aluminium carries high percentage of embodied energy.Also using paper and fibreboard means deforestation and would take 25-30 to replenish the raw material.
The above mentioned three companies have gone a step ahead and produced cutlery with partly eco-friendly materials and some with completely eco-friendly medium. The variety of materials used is sugar cane fibres, bamboos, wood,plastarch material which is 70% starch and 30% polypropylene. Basically the materials are annually renewable and have the least environmental impact. Even least environmental impact is an impact. The odds are hard to beat but....
The Edible Cutlery
The edible cutlery can beat the odds and can bio degrade in 3-4 days if not consumed. The shelf life of the edible cutlery is roughly 3 years. If consumed by human and through human waste it can be guided to domestic compost. Making a sustainable journey for edible cutlery. Interestingly, the three companies mentioned above also claim that their cutlery is suitable for home compost or commercial compost.
Above is a flow chart of how two possibilities of sustainable cutlery reach composting stage. I am intrigued to know scientifically which one carries more embodied energy throughout the process. With not much technical knowledge on embodied energy, I presume the edible cutlery has less impact on the environment as it can be reused; through composting can produce renewable energy and more importantly is biodegradable.
References:
http://www.bambuhome.com/
http://ecopartybox.com.au/
http://www.biopak.com.au/
http://www.bakeys.com/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-2WiqOtlqg&nohtml5=False
No comments:
Post a Comment