Every year, over 6 million tons of single use plastic are thrown away - most of this is cutlery - non-durable spoons, forks, knives and plates designed to pollute the world.
85% of the plastic waste produced on Earth is not recycled, and 90% of that ends up in the ocean - putting around 700 marine species in severe danger of extinction. That's one very slippery slope, which is actually true.
Let's go back to the earlier number - 6 million tons of plastic. Let's try to put that number in context - if we distributed 6 million tons of food, it'd be enough to feed 38% of the world's population for a day. We're not making this connection up randomly, we feel that eating our waste is the best way to eliminate it.
This guy - Narayana Peesapaty - came up with edible cutlery, made out of millets - not only does this have the potential to eliminate those 6 million tons of plastic, but saves groundwater reserves as well.
Millets consume 60 times lesser water💧 than rice, and this initiative gives farmers an incentive to grow that instead of rice 🍚
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73jPh0eRP-Y
People have also come up with ways to make edible plates made out of whear bran. However, this solution is not very practical since it requires a great amount of energy to make thsese, and each plate takes 150 seconds to produce.
https://giphy.com/gifs/whoa-hd-tim-and-eric-xT0xeJpnrWC4XWblEk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gs7bPxsttXc
The solutions out there indeed are mindblowing though.