The Pig Ate My Plate
Potatopak plate
According to a recent Time Small Business article The Dish on Green Disposables Americans use an estimated trillion disposable plates and utensils every year, with each disposable plate’s useful life averaging just five minutes. Add to this the fact that disposable plastic plates do not decompose – they sit in landfills for hundreds of years.
By contrast, New Zealand company Potatopak shows a video on their website of pigs eating their disposable plates. If you have been to a barbeque or party in recent years in New Zealand, you may have found yourself eating off a Potatopak plate made from potato starch. The plates are 100% biodegradable and completely decompose in a few weeks or months.
Potatopak’s potato starch is extracted from food processing plant waste water. So, Potatopak’s products are environmentally friendly, their manufacturing process produces zero waste, and they even reduce (and create value from) the waste of other processing facilities.
The Time article (referenced above) also went on to discuss environmentally friendly disposable plates made of leaves steamed into shape – from a US company Verterra.
I thought that both Potatopak and Verterra had excellent ‘unexpected ideas’ that are helping our environment as well as helping the companies gain attention.
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