December 10, 2009

VerTerra


Some restaurants in the Philippines serve food on banana leaves instead of plates--a clever idea if you ask me, presents great savings on water and dishwashing liquid. Leaves were the same thing that inspired Michael Dwork, during a stay in India where he saw women selling plates made from fallen leaves; that led him to start VerTerra Dinnerware. VerTerra's plates are made from fallen leaves and water, are biodegradable and compostable. You can even use these for outdoor events and be confident that they can hold up even in the heat, and the best part is you can even use them in ovens and microwaves. The plates are meant to be used just once, but there are people who hand-wash and reuse them--and apparently, they're still very serviceable.  Perhaps these gorgeous plates will make you take a second look at all the leaves you're raking up, too.
Written by Lynn at 10:43 AM
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2 comments:

  1. Interesting! They definitely look like they would last more than once. I wonder how the impact of manufacturing plates like this compares to other types of disposable plates.
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  2. @Kirsten, as a blogger I've written about and tried out all of their products. They do last longer than one use, with gentle hand washing. 3-5x in my experience.

    Their impact is greatly minimized as they reuse 84% of factory water (aiming for 90%) and none of the Palm leaves goes to waste, the scraps are powdered into fertilizer, given to the farmers they get the leaves from. They use 10% of the energy that recycled paper plates take, are completely non toxic, and increasingly available, last I heard about 400 stores in the US, including many Whole Foods.
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