Company Turns Avocado Pit Waste Into Biodegradable Straws and Cutlery
Cheaper than making plastic straws, a man finds a new way to make bioplastic from food waste.
All around the world, the ban on single-use plastic is coming into effect. Therefore, there is an interest in finding biodegradable alternatives.
But, too many biodegradable plastics are produced from fossil fuel, and some companies make “bioplastics” from corn.
The downside is… regular plastic is 40 percent less than biodegradable plastic.
Scott Munguia, a Mexican biochemical engineer, has come up with an idea.
In the center of Mexico’s avocado production, he opened his company named Biofase. There, he makes 15 tons of avocados pits daily and turns them into cutlery and straws.
Local companies that process avocados get rid of the pits that could be headed for a landfill. Therefore, he helps in lowering agricultural waste, and his production is extremely cheap.
The price of these biodegradable plastics is identical to ordinary plastic, so the company can pass the savings along to the customer.
Companies don’t need to find other lands to produce avocado seed bioplastic.
Different from other non-biodegradable plastics, it is absolutely biodegradable. It needs only 240 days to decompose, unlike conventional plastic which is predicted to decompose for 500 years, and it never biodegrades entirely.
It can be used after one year if it’s kept in a dry, cool place.
Mexico Daily News reports that Scott Munguia found out a way to extract a molecular compound from a hole to achieve a biopolymer. The biopolymer can be modeled in many different shapes.
The company tweeted: “Our family of biodegradable resins can be processed by all conventional methods of plastic molding.”
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