A couple of young Peruvians recently launched a new project named ‘Bio Plant’ to help lessen the amount of plastic being used in the world. They came out with am innovative product of biodegradable dishes that are made out of banana leaves in order to phase out the use of plastic plates and reduce the environmental pollution it has been causing.
Each biodegradable plate that is used instead of plastic plates will be one less item that would potentially pollute the earth and its waters. This new product has only a two-month decomposition and will naturally degrade completely even before its 60 days are over. Other commonly used containers and flatware are made out of styrofoam which takes 500 years to decompose, causing massive amounts of damage to all our oceans and wildlife.
Thanks to the co-financing they received from the Innovate Peru Program which they won in the Bio Challenge contest, Bio Plant was able to manufacture their own specialized machinery – presser, shipper and die cutter – in order to produce these biodegradable dishes. With this new equipment, they manufacture 50,000 dishes every month.
Project lead, Josué Soto explained that they work directly with banana producers in the Peruvian Amazon who are given fair prices and additional technical training in order to take advantage of banana cultivation.
Another group called Chuwa Plant has also created dishes with paper and cardboard cellulose, which are all disposable after a single use and can be used with any type of food, even liquids.
Soto said that they do not even need to cut down any banana trees, nor pluck their leaves out. They only use the leaves that break off when pickers remove clusters of bananas from the trees.
Rectangular in shape, these plates do not hold any carcinogenic components and they are free of styrene, a petroleum derivate that is found in other plastic or styrofoam containers.
Bio Plant biodegradable plates have already been tried and tested in various regions in Peru. They are now planning to enter the natural restaurants and ecological wineries market in order to supply them with their product.
“The approximate sale price of our dishes is 100 to 120 soles (US$29.64-35.56) for 100 dishes, depending on the thickness of the sheet, but over time it may be more accessible to all consumers,” says Soto.
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