Odisha girl’s innovative biodegradable cutlery from beer waste | Fusion - WeRIndia

Alternatives are essential to stop the usage of single-use plastic. Hence, many students and researchers have been exploring alternative materials for single-use plastic.

Anusuya Samantaray, who hailed from Odisha, is one among them. She is pursuing her Masters at Ku Leuven University in Belgium.

She, along with her friends Apoorva Vardhan and Varun Singh, came up with an innovative solution. That is, making edible cutlery from spent grain, a byproduct of the beer manufacturing industry.

They named the cutlery Eco Ware. They won the KICK Challenge, a business competition of the university that focuses on social entrepreneurship.

Anasuya’s father, Sanjay Samantaray, is a nature enthusiast. He instilled an interest in her about nature by teaching many things.

Sanjay is the founder of Surfing Yogis and conducted many beach cleanup campaigns as part of it. Anasuya was also helping her father many times.

As single-use plastic is one of the biggest environmental threats, Anasuya wants to do something to stop the menace. She and her father discussed this topic several times and concluded that sustainable alternatives and edible cutlery could stop the use of single-use plastic.

Several companies are exploring ways to make alternatives using rice and wheat. So, Anasuya wants to use other materials to make cutlery.

She and her friends researched a lot to know about spent grain, which is rich in fibre. Hence they thought of using it to make edible cutlery.

Spent grain is also widely used in pizzas in Belgium. Around 60,000 MT of spent grain is generated from different beer brands of the country. So, the trio decided to use spent grain for making edible cutlery, including spoons and dip cups.

They won the Gemma Frisius KICK Student Award for their innovation. Now, they want to bring their product into markets and are looking to associate with local breweries for it.

Image by Founcy Spoon from Pixabay (Free for commercial use)

Image Reference: https://pixabay.com/photos/edible-spoon-edible-cutlery-5474719/