Plastic spoons and forks are used only for a few minutes, but they stay in the environment for hundreds of years. Wanting to solve this problem, an entrepreneur came up with a simple but innovative idea.
In 2010, Narayana Peesapati, a former International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) scientist, founded Bakeys Edible Cutlery in Hyderabad and introduced world’s first edible spoons. He’s now turned it into a Rs 2 crore business.
Instead of using plastic, the cutlery is made from natural ingredients such as rice, wheat, jowar and black pepper.
After finishing a meal, people can either eat the spoon or throw it away without worrying about plastic waste. If it is discarded, it naturally breaks down within four to five days or becomes food for insects and small animals.
In a conversation withThe Better India, Peesapati said, “We know plastic has got so many chemical complexes that cause cancer, they don’t biodegrade, but still we are using a whole lot of plastic disposable cutlery. Why are we doing this? We have an alternative now. We come up with an alternative and that is edible Cutlery.”
“There is no coating, in fact, it is entirely nutritious. You can eat up the spoon. It is made of jowar, blended with rice and wheat without preservatives, just like dehydrated vegetables.”
“Our product also has a very long shelf life of more than three years. You can even have your hot soup also you can stir your sugar and have your tea. You can eat it up, you don’t want to eat it, you can just throw. It decomposes within 4 to 5 days.”Peesapati said that starting the business was challenging because the product was completely new and the technology did not exist. To arrange the money, he used his own flat as collateral to get a loan.
He explained that his goal was not only to replace plastic cutlery but also to create a bigger market for millets and encourage farmers to grow more such crops instead of rice.
He believes that although plastic spoons are cheaper today, the cost of edible cutlery can also come down as production increases. If the demand grows, he plans to buy raw materials directly from farmers, which will reduce costs and make his edible spoons affordable.
Bakeys Edible Cutlery is available in a variety of flavours, including sugar, ginger cinnamon, ginger garlic, celery, black pepper, cumin, mint ginger and carrot beetroot.
