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There will be plenty of food for thought when the inventor of edible cutlery takes to the stage at the Bahrain Chapter of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (BCICAI) eighth Annual International Conference on Friday and Saturday at the Hotel Diplomat Radisson Blu, Manama, writes Kristian Harrison.
At the conference, 450 chartered accountants from across the region and India will hear about trends and techniques on the theme ‘Challenges Create Opportunities’. One of the major guest speakers at the event will be Narayana Peesapaty.
Many years ago, when he saw a man scoop his food with a cracker after breaking his plastic spoon, a ‘lightbulb’ went off in the environmentalist and groundwater researcher’s head.
He decided to create an alternative to plastic cutlery, using Jowar (a type of finger millet which is a less water intensive plant than rice and takes up flavours just as easily The inventor will be speaking about his journey from inventor to entrepreneur.
He said: “About 120 billion pieces of disposable plastic cutlery are discarded in India every year. Plastic contains chemicals that can seep into food or beverages and cause cancer. I decided to create an alternative to plastic cutlery.
Spoons made from this millet are hard enough not to dissolve when we scoop up soup but easy to chew after the meal.” Peesapaty’s factory now makes more than 30 million edible spoons in sweet and savoury avours, including ginger-cinnamon, ginger-garlic, celery, black pepper, cumin, mint-ginger and carrot-beetroot.
Customers span cities in India, the US, China, Greece and Australia. The cutlery has a shelf life of more than three years and will decompose in just four-to-five days if not consumed within that time.
In contrast to this, an average plastic bottle takes about 450 years to break down.
