How Edible Cutlery Can Solve India¡¯s Water And Plastic Problem
As India prepares to phase out plastic, Narayana Peesapathy, Founder and Director of Bakeys, a Hyderabad-based company that makes edible cutlery points us to another plastic menace that is unknown and unnoticed. How safe are the plastic spoons
As India prepares to phase out plastic, Narayana Peesapathy, Founder and Director of Bakeys, a Hyderabad-based company that makes edible cutlery points us to another plastic menace that is unknown and unnoticed.
How safe are the plastic spoons we use in our daily lives?
A former researcher from International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) and International Water Management Institute (IWMI), Peesapathy started edible cutlery business with two intentions- one, addressing the plastic problem, and two reducing the water consumption that is used to grow rice in India.
How paddy guzzles water
Over 70% of water is consumed by agriculture in India. Peesapathy says, ¡°India is facing water scarcity due to faulty agricultural practices. When important agricultural states such as Punjab, Haryana and Tamilnadu declared to give free water and power, other states started doing that.¡±
Also Read: In Savri Village Of Madhya Pradesh, People Stay Thirsty As River & Handpumps Go Dry
According to Peesapathy, there are socio-economic dynamics behind this. And the dynamics start with a paradox. Millet has the tag of poor man¡¯s food, whereas rice was consumed by the rich. There was an aspirational value to rice as it was cooked on certain occasions only by the poor.
After water was given for free, everyone started cultivating rice. With free electricity, farmers set up borewells. The farmers produced and consumed rice, sold the surplus to government. This led to phasing out of millets.
He says, ¡°About 5000 litres of water are needed to grow one kilo of rice, and India has been overproducing rice. Between 2012 and 2016, there was a surplus procurement of 123.5 million tonnes.
The electricity consumed for producing this amount of rice is equal to giving power to NCR, Bombay, Pune, Hyderabad, Chennai and Bangalore for four years. Why should we be silent about our energy and water security?¡± His idea is to bring back millets, and reduce the water-guzzling crop, rice.
Also Read: Reviving Naulas, The Ancient Water Temples Of The Kumaon Himalayas
For making edible cutlery, Peesapathy uses sorghum (jowar), wheat and rice flour. There are plain, savoury and sweet spoons made here. And one can choose from ginger-cinnamon, ginger-garlic, cumin, black pepper, etc. ¡°As they are baked in high temperature, the moisture is very less. For people who cannot bite the spoon, it can be left to decompose.¡±
Proliferating plastic spoons
Edible cutlery was also positioned against plastic disposables. He says, ¡°As a petroleum derivative, plastic has a lot of chemical complexes and they leach into food.¡±
He adds, ¡°Industrial lubrication is applied on the moulds to prevent them from sticking to products. These are wiped, but not cleaned. After the spoons are packed, it is sent to the vendor.
Also Read: In Assam's Karimganj, Residents Are Forced To Source Drinking Water From Puddles
The vendor uses it, after opening the spoons from the packet, without cleaning. In this process, you are licking industrial contamination and small micrograms of plastic.¡±
Peesapathy further looked at life cycle analysis of the spoon- what happens when the spoon is thrown by the customer? ¡°It does not go away, but comes back into the system¡±, he says.
He adds,¡± We have food safety norms, laws, standards. Anywhere in the world, people talk about how hygienic food should be prepared but are absolutely silent about how hygienic the utensils should be. There is no law.¡±
The plastic spoons are used and reused a multiple times.
He says, ¡°I was at a wedding. Usually, after eating everyone goes out, but I went on the other side. I saw that the spoons were segregated.
The person who was segregating said she needed to give it to her supervisor who sells this spoon again for 70 paise. And let me tell you this is not just in India but anywhere in the world.¡±
If we look at the history of the cutlery, stainless steel came first. They were washed and reused. Then came aluminium. ¡°And then plastic entered, which was so cheap that it wiped out the entire aluminium industry,¡± says Peesapathy. The culture of washing and cleaning ended with that.
He says, ¡°If one has to remove grease from plastic, hot water and detergent has to be used. But when you do that, plastic becomes softer, and then brittle.
Hence no one cleans it with hot water. They just rinse it.¡± And the accumulation remains on the spoon.
Where plastic spoon is sold for Re 1, Bakeys sells their spoon for Rs 4 per piece. Though it is not expensive, the issue is that the one rupee plastic spoon becomes Rs 100 when reused multiple times.
Peesapathy says, ¡°For the buyer, it is about reducing the input cost. What I am doing now is informing and making people aware of the hazards of plastic, as they are end consumers, not vendors.¡± The production process of spoons comes under zero discharge.
Bakeys products have been exported to Australia, Bulgaria, Canada, Estonia, Germany, Hong Kong, USA, UK, UAE.
The writer is a freelance environment journalist based in Coimbatore.
