Dishes degrade for Earth
After her birthday dinner at Azteca a few weeks ago, Marni Solheim sent her to-go box back. She wanted a smaller one. The perplexed waiter insisted that she needed the larger size. She was persistent; as the box was Styrofoam and would never biodegrade, she wanted to at least use the smallest box possible.
As landfills reach capacity, some consumers are demanding green, Earth-friendly products, which used to be hard to find.
EarthShell recently launched a product line of 100 percent biodegradable yet wood-free, disposable dinnerware, something that Solheim advocates at her job as an environmental specialist for the Department of Ecology.
“This sort of product is important because it’s nontoxic and biodegradable. It breaks down into something that can go back into the earth,” she said. “It doesn’t harm the planet.”
Fifteen years have been spent perfecting these disposable plates.
“It’s like using the world’s biggest waffle iron,” Cindy Eikenberg, marketing communication manager for EarthShell Corp. said of the manufacturing process.
A starch made from potatoes, wheat or some other grain is mixed with limestone, fiber and water to form a slurry. The batterlike liquid is poured into a mold where it is flash-heated. The starch in the mixture puffs up much like a waffle, the steam escapes and a rigid plate, bowl or box emerges.
The resulting dishes are as sturdy as many disposable dishes and are easily strong enough for a company picnic or potluck meal. Best of all, they are made from abundant, renewable resources and will not clog up landfills.
A study preformed by the Department of Natural Resource Sciences and Landscape Architecture at the University of Maryland found that EarthShell containers could be expected to biodegrade within 60 to 90 days and that traditional paperboard containers would take three to five times longer. Polystyrene (Styrofoam) showed no signs of ever degrading.
“Styrofoam is there for good. Five hundred years from now, it will still be wherever you left it,” Eikenberg said. “The price of oil shows no sign of going down any time soon, and of course Styrofoam is a petro-based product. Paper plates are made of trees, not an annually renewable product.”
Some consumers shun recyclable products, saying that the quality isn’t good enough and that they are too costly.
“Limestone is one of the most abundant minerals on earth,” Eikenberg said. “And potatoes and corn are a yearly renewable resource. This keeps us price-competitive, since our materials are so low cost.”
Solheim is currently working on an organics initiative policy for Washington.
“We want to eliminate the concept of solid waste,” she said. “Eventually we’d like to see everything that is produced be capable of becoming another raw product such as compost, be used for some other sort of product or be put back into the ground without doing any harm. It appears this product can do that.”