This firm makes meals packaging out of bamboo to chop down on trash

To sort out Thailand’s mounting trash downside, one firm is popping to the nation’s plants.

Common Biopack makes packaging that it sells to eating places and producers. However slightly than plastic, it makes use of a mix of bamboo and cassava, crops which are extensively discovered throughout the nation.

After rising quickly in current a long time, Thailand has change into one in all Asia’s greatest economies. However like many different nations within the area, it has been gradual to attempt to fight the hundreds of thousands of tons of trash produced every year.

“Waste administration is a giant downside in every single place,” stated Common Biopack’s managing director, Vara-Anong Vichakyothin.

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The corporate is utilizing a expertise devised at a Bangkok college to make its zero-waste packaging. It hopes it can ultimately substitute most of the Styrofoam packing containers and plastic baggage that find yourself in big rubbish dumps throughout Thailand and different Southeast Asian nations.

Its eco-friendly system took 5 years to develop and is so adaptable it might find yourself getting used to package deal issues like furnishings and even telephones. The bamboo it makes use of comes from leftover scraps from the chopstick manufacturing course of.

Within the cities of Bangkok and Chiang Mai, the place takeout drink containers and noodle packets line the sidewalks, the corporate provides eating places, natural farmers and different companies within the food and drinks trade.

However discovering new purchasers will be tough.

Takeout meals distributors in Thailand wish to maintain prices down in a aggressive enterprise with skinny margins. Asking them to spend extra on packaging for environmental causes is a troublesome promote.

“The native financial system nonetheless doesn’t help [this technology]” stated Common Biopack’s founder, Suthep Vichakyothin.

However that hasn’t stopping different firms from getting into the sustainable packaging market in Thailand. Like Common Biopack, they’re betting on rising environmental consciousness ultimately resulting in a rise in demand.

To change into extra aggressive, Suthep’s firm is investing. It is aiming to ramp up manufacturing by constructing {a partially} automated meeting line at its manufacturing facility close to Bangkok and doubling its staffing from 50 folks to 100.

The purpose is to extend month-to-month capability from 300,000 items to at least one million.

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Numerous the demand comes from abroad. Certainly one of its clients makes use of the pure packaging for coconut water it exports.

Common Biopack says it is also getting curiosity in its merchandise from different nations, notably in Scandinavia.

CNNMoney (Hong Kong) First printed February 12, 2017: 9:08 PM ET