Eat Your Dinner and the Plate Too

I recently stumbled upon a great little site dedicated to biodegradable products. The company is called Potatopak and their online store, PotatoPlates.com, offers a range of compostable dishware, trays, cutlery, and bags. These environmentally-friendly products provide a welcome alternative to the “disposable” paper and plastic products that currently flood the market. I find the term “disposable” quite irritating because it removes all sense of responsibility from the consumer.  When people are given plastic utensils at a diner or plastic cups at a fast food restaurant, there is a disconnection between the act of throwing away the materials and where they end up. The plastics end up in landfills where they are buried under the continuous flow of garbage or burned, releasing fumes into the air. What I find most irritating about this process is that energy and material are consumed so that one person can eat one meal. After that, the plastic forks are never used again because they are deemed disposable.

Compostable products provide the convenience without the irrational material waste. In other words, these disposable products are sustainable.

Potatopak puts it: “Unlike the manufacturing process that is used to create plastics and polystyrene, our patented manufacturing process emits no noxious fumes to the atmosphere or toxic liquid waste. Plastics and Polystyrene unfortunately have bi-sphenols and styrene which are carciogenic and are not good for mankind.  And, while plastics come from oil — a limited natural resource — we use a renewable resource – potatoes – in our manufacturing process.”

All the waste that Potatopak produces in the manufacturing process is fed to livestock, fish, or worms. They even have a video clip of pigs eating material scrapes on their site. In the coming decades, I hope to see sustainable products like this gain a stronger foothold in our consumer society. You cannot get much eco-friendlier than this!

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