As the UK government announces new controls on plastic items to come into force in England by April 2020, with Scotland also taking steps to restrict or ban plastic straws, and plastic-stemmed cotton buds, there some super-inventive eco-friendly alternatives to straws available that we think all licensees should know about.
Biofase is a Mexico-based company that constructs its single-use cutlery and straws out of bioplastics made from discarded avocado stones, making Biofase’s manufacturing process fairly closed-loop.
The company’s getting a lot of attention at the moment, even though entrepreneur Scott Munguia actually founded the brand back in 2013.
He told Forbes magazine that he came up with the idea for Biofase when he was a chemical engineering student in 2012. After seeing a photo of the corn molecule that companies were using to create bioplastic, he realized that avocado seed molecules might be another great alternative for the bioplastic industry.
Biofase claims that its forks, knives, spoons, and straws have a lower carbon footprint than any other comparable material — even paper.
Its website says, “The carbon footprint is much less than other plastics and bioplastics, including paper. This is largely due to a phenomenon called bonus of biogenic carbon, which explains that the Avocado tree, when growing, absorbs CO2 of the atmosphere to form its tissues. This phenomenon does not occur in the production of any plastic derived of the oil.”
It takes 240 days for Biofase’s avocado seed-based bioplastic items to biodegrade in natural conditions, whether they are simply buried underground or placed in a compost pile. A lot of other bioplastic-based utensils and straws have a more intensive biodegradation process.
4eco.uk distributes Biofase products in the UK.
