Edible Cutlery: Eat Your Spoon and Save the Earth

New Delhi (Sputnik) — Former researcher Narayana Peesapaty has made some eco-friendly edible cutlery. According to some estimates, around 40 million tons of reusable plastic cutlery gets thrown away every year which chokes rivers and can take up to a thousand years to biodegrade naturally in the environment.

​Edible cutlery may become a viable solution to save the environmental degradation from the use of plastic cutlery. In fact, the edible cutlery is not only an environmental friendly alternative for the plastics but also useful in preserving the all-important ground water. 

"Millet requires sixty-times less water compared to rice. Now edible cutlery has been created to generate a demand for millet and in the process make farmers come back to growing millet. So, on the one hand we will be supporting ground water conservation. The second thing that I am looking at is the plastic invasion." 

​"There is so much plastic that is getting into our fold, these are not easily biodegradable and they also contain lots of chemical toxins and carcinogens which they transfer to the food. Whereas millet is extremely nutritious. So, if somebody uses plastic they will get poisoned, if somebody uses edible cutlery they will get nutrition. In this way edible cutlery kills two birds with one stone. On the one hand it will take farmers away from the water demanding crops like rice and get them to cultivate millet, and on the other hand I have an alternative to plastic," said the founder of edible cutlery, Narayana Peesapaty in an interview with Sputnik. 

​He further added that, "Edible cutlery is made of millet, jowar, sorghum. Right now I am blending rice and wheat in it but in the future I am going only for millet."

Edible cutlery has a shelf life of about three years and tastes like cereals. It comes in three flavors — plain, sweet or spicy. Currently these tasty pieces of cutlery are available in a variety of shapes including soup spoons, forks and chopsticks. Narayana Peesapaty has managed to keep the price of edible cutlery low so that it can be used by the masses.

According to Narayana Peesapaty, "People don't like plastics but there are alternatives already available in the market such as bio plastics and food grade plastics but people are not buying them because of the cost. So what I am doing is coming out with a product which is as cheap as plastic. I will include the technology in terms of efficiency of production and curb raw material wastage so that way on the production I have been able to control the cost. On the selling side, we will be selling only online so the margins of distributors and sellers will be avoided. Our market is through social media and selling it through e-commerce."

Narayana Peesapaty has been getting lots of enquiries from abroad about his edible cutlery.

"I am getting so many overseas inquiries from across the world including Russia. But as of now I am focusing only on India, after that I will focus on overseas markets," Narayana Peesapaty told Sputnik.