Eat Your Spoon and Save the Environment

Use of plastic cutlery is very popular all round the world, either there is a party or while having food outside, we use plastic cutlery most of time.

Why?

Just because it is easy to throw, cheap to buy and easily available.

But we don’t think about the adverse effects of plastic on human health and environment. Plastic takes 10-1000 years to decompose and releases chemicals like Lead, Cadmium and mercury directly into the food packed in them and effects human health in negative manner like causing endocrine disruption, which can lead to cancers, birth defects, immune system suppression and developmental problems in children.

A good Alternative

Although plastic is being  replaced by paper which decomposes easily but paper production is causing deforestation. A good alternative to this is eatable cutlery which is developed  by Peesapaty, an agricultural scientist  from India.

He created spoons that are eatable, either we can eat them or after having food just throw them in the dustbin, they decompose easily. These spoons are made of Millet flour, Rice and Wheat. He produces 10,000 spoons a day using 500 Kg of Millet flour. Same amount of Rice flour and Wheat flour can be used for preparation. Each spoon costs four rupees. They told that these spoons taste like crackers. Millet consumption has been reduced drastically for past few years, farmers have stopped growing it due to low market price. This practice can increase millet production and will profit millet market. These spoons have shelf life for 3 years.

Benefits

• It is an environment-friendly option.
• Spoons are nutritive and tasty.
• It will provide employment to many people.

What more can be done?

• More variety of flavours can be introduced.
• Plates and glasses can also be created but there will be a problem of hygiene, more research is needed in this field.

I wish that all of us use these environment friendly options and try to develop more to save environment.