This Thai company makes food packaging out of bamboo to cut down on trash

This Thai company makes food packaging out of bamboo to cut down on trash


To deal with Thailand’s mounting trash problem, just one corporation is turning to the country’s plant life.

Universal Biopack makes packaging that it sells to dining establishments and producers. But relatively than plastic, it works by using a mixture of bamboo and cassava, crops that are extensively located throughout the nation.

Following rising fast in new a long time, Thailand has turn out to be one particular of Asia’s most significant economies. But like many other nations in the region, it is been gradual to test to beat the tens of millions of tons of trash generated each and every 12 months.

“Waste administration is a large trouble in all places,” stated Common Biopack’s running director, Vara-Anong Vichakyothin.

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The organization is employing a technological innovation devised at a Bangkok college to make its zero-squander packaging. It hopes it will sooner or later switch many of the Styrofoam bins and plastic bags that conclusion up in substantial garbage dumps throughout Thailand and other Southeast Asian nations around the world.

Its eco-helpful formula took five yrs to produce and is so adaptable it could finish up getting utilised to package matters like household furniture and even telephones. The bamboo it utilizes arrives from leftover scraps from the chopstick producing system.

UB Pack 3

In the metropolitan areas of Bangkok and Chiang Mai, the place takeout consume containers and noodle packets line the sidewalks, the business supplies restaurants, organic farmers and other companies in the meals and consume field.

But acquiring new consumers can be challenging.

Takeout food stuff distributors in Thailand want to maintain expenses down in a competitive organization with slender margins. Asking them to shell out additional on packaging for environmental causes is a rough promote.

“The local economic system however does not assist [this technology]” explained Universal Biopack’s founder, Suthep Vichakyothin.

UB Pack 2

But that has not stopping other firms from getting into the sustainable packaging sector in Thailand. Like Universal Biopack, they are betting on expanding environmental awareness sooner or later main to an boost in need.

To come to be much more competitive, Suthep’s organization is investing. It is really aiming to ramp up manufacturing by constructing a partly automated assembly line at its factory around Bangkok and doubling its staffing from 50 men and women to 100.

The purpose is to improve month-to-month ability from 300,000 units to just one million.

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A large amount of the need comes from overseas. Just one of its clients takes advantage of the pure packaging for coconut water it exports.

Universal Biopack suggests it truly is also getting fascination in its products and solutions from other international locations, notably in Scandinavia.

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



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