Make Room, Plastics… Degradable Bio-Packaging May Be The Way Of The Future

By Isaac Fletcher, contributing writer, Food Online

An entrepreneur has launched a venture to replace plastic packaging with low-cost packaging made from environmentally friendly cereal waste

Inexpensive, waterproof, hygienic, and easily degradable, banana leaves have been used for centuries across India as a natural method of food packaging. With inspiration from the simplicity of banana leaf packaging, entrepreneur Jaydeep Korde made the decision to launch Valueform, a next-generation packaging company that makes disposable packaging out of waste rice and wheat straw as an alternative to plastic and polystyrene.

Check out how a new processing technique is turning agriculture’s refuse into food

After the initial launch in 2003, seven years of development created a process to turn any kind of cereal waste into packaging. Korde explains, “Straw is annually renewable, which makes it a more sustainable raw material than paper.” While there are other natural alternatives to bio-plastics, such as corn starch packaging, they often have to compete for raw materials with both food producers and biofuel manufacturers.

Additionally, a decline in global newspaper sales has caused demand for recycled paper products to outstrip supply, in turn creating a growing niche for environmental paper alternatives. Korde elaborates, “Recycled paper has become an expensive commodity. Trend wise, that is only going one way.” Realizing the opportunity to capitalize on downtime at paper pulping factories, Korde developed his new technology to be compatible with machinery that is already in place. Rather than having to build new factories to produce the bio-packaging, Valueform can convert existing paper pulping facilities to handle its straw inputs.

Korde aims to keep processing costs as low as possible in order to target large retailers, explaining, “We had to make sure that our product was commercially viable. Supermarkets are pushed financially, so solutions have to be price equivalent or less. It can’t be 10 percent more expensive just because it’s environmentally friendly.”

Valueform is currently working on deals with various supermarkets with the hope of having products that use its packaging on shelves by the end of this year.