REVIEW OF

LITERATURE
Plastic waste covers our oceans and landfill. The past 70 years of plastic waste
have resulted in pollution so ubiquitous scientists say it’s a marker of a new
geological epoch, the manmade Anthropocene.

Plastic cutlery is a contributor to this enormous problem – estimates suggest the

US alone uses 40bn plastic utensils a year – but the founder of Indian cutlery
company Bakeys thinks he might have a solution. Cutlery you can eat.

The vegan friendly spoons are made from rice, wheat and sorghum, an ancient
grain originally from Africa. Sorghum was chosen as a primary ingredient for its
tough quality (it doesn’t go soggy in liquids) and because it is suitable for
cultivation in semi-arid areas.

The cutlery comes in three flavours – savoury (salt and cumin), sweet (sugar) and
plain. “It tastes like a cracker, a dry cracker because we don’t put any fat in it. It
can complement any food. The taste of the food gets into the spoon,” says
company founder Narayana Peesapaty.

Bakeys’ crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter had a goal of $20,000 (£14,000)

but has already raised 12 times that. A parallel campaign on Indian
platform Kettohas exceeded its 100,000 rupee (£1,050) goal 24 times over.
Peesapaty says he has had emails pouring in from around the world. “It is so
simple and it is this simplicity that has caught the attention of most people,” he
says.

With a background in forest management, Peesapaty previously worked at the

International Water Management Institute’s crop research centre and says he
wanted to use a raw material that won’t put much pressure on water resources.
Even if the spoons are dumped after use, they decompose in a few days, according
to the company. Bakeys says this makes its product more environmentally friendly
than biodegradable plastic utensils made from corn plastic, which need to be
subjected to high heat in specialised composting facilities to break down.

The spoons are packaged in paper bags and shipped using styrofoam to prevent
breakage. Peesapaty acknowledges this is the least sustainable part of the operation
and is looking for alternatives.

Although the edible cutlery has only just found a following – a recent Facebook
video with Peesapaty has had more than 5m views – Bakeys has been making
spoons at its factory in Hyderabad, India, since 2011, where it employs nine
women. It sells 1.5m spoons per year to catering companies serving food at
weddings and other events, but Peesapaty hopes take-up among food vendors will
grow.

There are challenges. While Peesapaty hopes to expand Bakeys’ offering to edible
chopsticks and forks, edible knives are out as moisture blunts them. The biggest
hurdle is probably cost. Bakeys can sell an edible spoon for 2 rupees (2p), cheaper
than the wooden equivalent but twice the price of a plastic spoon.

Peesapaty’s goal is to get the cost of a spoon down to 1.5 or 1 rupees. He hopes to
do this by sourcing crops directly from farmers and building an economy of scale
by adding new production lines with the investment raised online.

If one examines any pile of trash, it will be seen that one of the major components
in it is disposable stuff; and amongst this category, plastic cutlery’s contribution is
quite substantial.
Wouldn’t it be amazingly convenient if after using cutlery we could just eat it?
Hyderabad, Telengana’s Narayana Peesapaty had the same idea and he went on to
establish Akeys Foods private limited, which is a pioneer in manufacturing edible
cutlery on a commercial scale. Bakeys edible cutlery is a healthy, hygienic and
eco-friendly alternative to the very polluting plastic cutlery which also has a high
carbon footprint.

Plastic contains toxic and carcinogenic substances which leach into food and harm
the health of the user directly. Even in ‘Food Grade Plastic’, this leaching happens,
albeit under the so-called ‘permissible limits’.

All of Bakeys edible cutlery is made up of a blend of jowar, rice and wheat flours
to which small amounts of cummin, carrom, black pepper, rock salt and sugar are
added. The mix is kneaded with plain hot water and turned into dough which is
then moulded into different shapes and baked. The entire range contains no
chemicals, preservatives or even fat.

The basic price of a single piece of cutlery is as low as Rs 2, making it a very

attractive, low cost and eco-friendly alternative. The wide range includes dinner
spoons, soup spoons, dessert spoons, chop sticks and forks. The cutlery once taken
out of the packaging has to be preserved in an air tight container.

If one does not wish to eat the spoon after the meal, one can safely throw it in any
plant and just pour some water on it. In this way it readily gets absorbed into the
soil. Alternately the used cutlery can even be added to compost. Bakeys eco-
friendly, edible cutlery does not turn soggy or drop off even in hot liquids like
soup, tea or coffee.
This range is so safe that it can even be offered to teething babies. It can safely be
used and consumed by the elderly and even pregnant women. The cutlery is high
on nutrition and supplies a good dose of energy when hungry. Apart from being
100% biodegradable, Bakeys cutlery can safely be consumed by both vegetarians
and vegans.
 Founder of Bakeys Foods Pvt.Ltd.

The idea struck him when he spotted a few people use khakra to pick food served
on a flight. Later, he was familiarized with rotis made with Sorghum which are
really hard and tough in texture, he had to soak them in dal for a while till it turned
softer in order to consume. This pushed him to work on an organic spoon made of
food, as an alternative to plastic spoons.

He quotes, “Change is inevitable. Before this change can overtake and overwhelm
us, we should be the instruments of change.”
A former researcher with ICRISAT- Narayana Peesapathy was the one to come up
with the idea of edible cutlery. He holds BSC (Hons) in Chemistry from Osmania
University and MBA from IIFM- Bhopal. He worked as Associate Research
Director at AC Neilson ORG- Marg, Baroda, India and had undertaker over 50
consulting assignments related to agriculture and Agri-based industries, forestry
and forest based cottage industries, rural development, renewable energy
technologies, etc. and headed the energy and forestry sector. Later hejoined
International Crop Research Water Management Institute (IWMI), based I the
premises of International Crop Research Institute of Semi Arid Tropics
(ICRISAT), Hyderabad as Senior Scientific Officer. Here he undertook research on
the nexus between energy and groundwater under a USAID supported program
WENEXA. Published several policy and research papers on groundwater
management and associated issues such as Minimum Suport Prices supporting
development of groundwater irrigation intensive agriculture, need for groundwater
legislation, inputs to the Andhra Pradesh Water Land Tree act 2004, etc. He is the
Founder and managing Director of Bakeys Foods Private Limited- Developing
innovative solutions (grounded on business model) to growing environmental
problems, managing the operations, developing the team andall associated
functions required for running the company. He believes that the “Change is
inevitable. Before this change can overtake and overwhelm us, we should be the
instruments of change”. He created this business to disapprove the conventionally
known fact that environmental safeguarding and social responsibility rarely
integrate with sound business process”. He says. “for Bakeys Foods, environmental
and social amelioration is the business”.

This campaign has been started by Sarah Munir, who has worked in promoting and
distributing edible utensils in the US and North America. Due to the high level of
demand around the world, the campaign was created to simplify and streamline th
process of getting everyone access to their products.

Bakey’s have come up with an edible alternative to the 120 billion pieces of
disposable plastic knives, forks and spoons discarded in India every
year. Environmentally safe, they have created plain, sweet and savoury
spoons from millet, rice and wheat. If not eaten, they disintegrate in less than
five days.

Founder Narayana Peesapathy created the nutritious spoons to prove that

environmental safeguarding and social responsibility can go hand in hand with a
sound business process: “Change is inevitable,” he says. “Before this change can
overtake and overwhelm us, we should be the instruments of change”.

Peesapaty told the Deccan Chronicle: "Tons and tons of rice rot every year in
India. I had to do something. We first started making chopsticks with rice and
jowar and later produced spoons and forks."

These cutlery can be used for eating anything. It will last till the end of your meal.
They are ideal for teething babies too.

Eat your utensil and prevent waste at its source!

The world’s first edible cutlery line made of three flours: rice, wheat, and sorghum
launched by Bakey's help us change the way we eat and think about waste!

We understand how important it is to be able to provide delicious cutlery that can

be eaten by anyone. We are already fully vegan, preservative free, trans fat free,
dairy free and operate on principals of fair trade. We have put a focus on bringing
up the following certifications within the following year:

Nutrition Facts
The mission is to start a cutlery revolution. Currently, about 40 BILLION plastic
utensils are used just within the United States within a year. Worldwide, this
becomes a figure at 16 times this magnitude. A majority of these utensils are only
used once and then discarded.

Compostable utensils made of corn may seem like an answer to the problem. But it
turns out, a good percentage of corn based biodegradable utensils are thrown into
landfills anyway, where they will remain for a very long time without degradation.
Because these utensils need high heat and very specific conditions to properly
degrade, many times their benefits are negated.

Of course, one may ask, why do we not just replace all our utensils with reusable
cutlery. Ask yourself, is this possible in today’s globalized world? Is it possible for
the millions of fast food restaurants around the world to provide reusable cutlery
for one of the many customers that come in for lunch?

Therefore, our goal is to provide a replacement for the current disposable utensils
on the market. Our spoons are delicious, but if they are not consumed, they are
able to degrade in any outside environment, as they do not have specific
requirements for degradation. In a standard environment where the spoons are
exposed to nature, they will degrade within 10 days or be eaten by other animals,
similarly to a biscuit that may be thrown outdoors.
Our ingredients are as simple with absolutely no preservatives. The lack of water,
moisture, or fat in our product allows it to have a long shelf life without the need

for extra preservatives. They include: sorghum flour, rice flour, and wheat flour.
However, because we knead our dough through a certain method, our final product
contains less than 10 ppm in gluten. Though we are not yet certified gluten free, we
are working on it, and our ultimate goal is to create a formulation that requires
absolutely no wheat. Our first offering, the edible lunch spoon, goes perfect with
ice cream, yogurt, and a variety of soups. The spoon itself does not degrade within
liquids due to the presence of a large quantity of sorghum, a hearty crop that is
strong, abundant, and requires very little energy for cultivation.

That brings to the main point of why sorghum has been chosen as the primary
ingredient. Compared to sugarcane and corn, which are the major crops currently
used for biodegradables, sorghum requires far fewer nutrients and water for
cultivation. In fact, if we look at the kilowatt hours required to produce one
biodegradable corn based spoon vs one sorghum based edible spoon, we can draw
the following conclusions:

Values for sorghum taken from water usage in producing and generating sorghum
crops as well as forming the crop into spoons.

Of the energy it takes to produce 1 plastic utensil, we can produce 100 sorghum
based spoons. And in comparison to Corn/PLA, we are able to produce 50. Our
energy costs are minimized through a semi-automatic process that minimizes waste
and maximizes efficiency. Our low usage of water in the production of each spoon
(Less than 2% of the weight per spoon), allows our spoons to have a very long
shelf life up to 2 years while maintaining their crispness.

Our ambitions stretch far beyond the realm of edible spoons. Currently, we have
molds to produce chopsticks, dessert spoons, and forks. Our plan is to expand into
cups, plates, and many more traditional disposable tableware. Our goal is to create
and expand into a whole new line.

But we need your help. In producing our other lines as well as minimizing the cost
of our spoons (so that they are far more competitive with compostables on the
market), we need the funds to expand into our other lines.

What is the $20,000 for?

In order to expand our lines, we need to purchase additional molds for additional
utensils (chopsticks, forks, and soup spoons). In order to keep our price per spoon
competitive so that everyone can use them, we need a large quantity of molds to be
run each time that we run our production. On top of that, we are also looking to
further automate our production process, which will speed up our production as
well as further lower our prices. This is also to simplify our packaging process, as
we package our spoons in bulk in biodegradable cellophane to minimize any
outside packaging that may end up thrown out.

What have we achieved so far?

We have succeeded in selling 1.5 million spoons in India every year. But we need
your help! We are about to reach massive heights and we need the funds to be able
to continue. We have gotten orders from around the world, but in order to be able
to fulfill all of them, we need to be able to ramp up our system. Our future facility
will be able to product 800,000 spoons and/or other utensils in one day. We have
had several large requests for our other utensils as well, of which our goal is to
begin within the next 3 months.

Our Rewards

Of course, our rewards will be dedicated to our delicious spoons. For pledges
starting at $10 and over, we will make sure you are the first to get ahold of our new
flavors. We have created a variety of different quantities, both for personal use and
for larger scale and commercial purposes.

During his daily bus commute in the bustling Indian city of Hyderabad, there was
something that really bothered Narayana Peesapaty.
"Everybody was eating something on their way to work," says Peesapaty, who was
working as a sustainable farming researcher for a nonprofit organization at the
time. But it wasn't his fellow bus riders' snacking habits that troubled him. It was
their plastic cutlery.

Every day, he'd see hundreds of people chuck their plastic spoons and forks in the
garbage. Grasping the scale of this problem, Peesapaty had an epiphany: "What if
we could actually eat the cutlery, instead of throwing them away?"

So, in 2010, he founded Bakey's — a startup that sells edible spoons that taste just
like crackers, made out of dried millet, rice and wheat.
The edible utensils come in three flavors — plain, sweet (baked with a bit of sugar)
and savory (seasoned rock salt, black pepper, cardamom and cumin). For those
with a gluten intolerance, Bakey's substitutes the wheat with barley and corn. The
ingredients are all sourced from local farmers, Peesapaty says.

These spoons have a shelf life of three years and can decompose within days after
use — if they're not eaten, that is. And because they're baked at high heat and
contain very little moisture, Peesapaty says, it takes about 10 minutes of soaking
before the spoons start to dissolve in yogurt or soup.

Edible and biodegradable cutlery can be a great alternative to non-biodegradable

plastic, says Ben Kneppers, a sustainability consultant and co-founder of the plastic
waste social enterprise Bureo. But they come with their own set of ecological risks.
"If you are producing crops which require land, water and energy solely for the
purpose of making single-use cutlery, then you could still run into a big
[ecological] footprint," he says, "one that could compete with land meant for
producing food."
Kneppers also stresses the importance of safely disposing of the edible cutlery, as
the spoons' high nutrient content could affect the balance of sensitive ecosystems,
such as marine areas, so it's "best just to eat them," he says

There's also the issue of cost. A set of 100 edible spoons costs about $4. "They are
now a bit more expensive than the [plastic cutlery]," admits Peesapaty. "But
depending on the growing demand, it is possible to produce them for much cheaper
than plastic."

For now, it seems that many consumers are willing to pay a premium for his
products. The spoons are available for purchase online — but Bakey's ships only to
customers within India. After being featured in several Indian and international
news outlets, Peesapaty says the company has gotten a lot of requests from
consumers all over the world. He is currently working to increase output, and he's
developing more products — including forks and chopsticks. By early 2017, he
says he hopes to start selling internationally.

After all, Peesapaty's fellow commuters aren't unique in their love for plastic
cutlery. "If health, hygiene and eco-friendliness are priorities for the governments
and people," he says, "such products will get momentum and will actually become
the new need."

What happened to the plastic utensils that were left over after your last takeout
meal? If you’re like most of us, they ended up being thrown out with the rest of the
garbage, another by-product of our unsustainable, “disposable” society.
In the US alone, 40 billion disposable plastic utensils are discarded every year after
a single use, while in India the figure is 120 billion. Not only are they non-
biodegradable for the most part, choking landfills or ending up in the ocean, the
downsides to “disposable” cutlery extend to health risks as the low-cost plastics
used to make such utensils contain carcinogenic chemicals that leach into food,
particularly in the presence of heat, and are released into the environment after the
plastics are dumped in landfills. Some pertinent facts: The plastics industry
currently consumes as much oil as the aviation sector; the equivalent of a truckload
of plastic waste is dumped into the oceans every minute; just 5 per cent of plastic
packaging is recycled; consumption of plastics is expected to rise fourfold by 2050.

Frustrated by the sight of mountains of plastic in India’s landfills, Narayan

Peesapaty, the founder and managing director of Bakeys Food, has come up with a
novel solution to this increasingly ubiquitous problem in the form of edible cutlery.
Since its founding in 2010, Hyderabad-based Bakeys Food has produced more than
1.5 million edible spoons, in three varieties—plain, sweet, and spicy, to match your
food, although the company’s website notes that custom flavors can be made with
additional ingredients, such as onion, tomato, garlic, or ginger.
“[An unflavored spoon] tastes like a cracker, a dry cracker because we don’t put
any fat in it. It can complement any food. The taste of the food gets into the
spoon,” says Peesapaty, whose background is in agricultural and groundwater
research. (The Guardian)
Made from rice, wheat, and sorghum (a form of millet), the spoons—the company
plans to expand its range of utensils to forks and chopsticks—are vegan-friendly
and don’t get soggy during use, even in hot food or soup, and can even be given to
teething babies. And should your meal leave you too full to eat your cutlery, it can
be safely discarded, decomposing in less than a week, compared with the hundreds
of years typical for plastic waste.
“These edible cutlery are chemical free,” Peesapaty confirms. “There is no use of
preservatives and [they] can last up to three years in an unused condition.
However, you need to make sure they are stored in air-tight boxes or packed
properly.” (Deccan Chronicle)
So far, says Peesapaty, the biggest hurdle to making the products more widely
available is cost. He is currently able to sell his spoons for Rs2 (US$0.03) each,
which, while cheaper than wood, is still twice as expensive as plastic. Pessapaty
aims to lower this barrier by expanding production through crowd-sourced funding
and by purchasing raw materials directly from farmers, and plans to set up
distribution channels for overseas customers.
 Competitors

The Sugu Company of Taiwan

A company in Taiwan has good news for people too busy or lazy to wash dishes:
It has invented what they say are the world's first edible tableware.

Their bowls and plates are made of oatmeal and can be eaten or thrown away after
use. Unlike Styrofoam, they won't cause any pollution because birds and dogs can
eat them. The surface is glossy just like china; they're the first of their kind in the
world.

Production is initially set at 20,000 bowls and plates each day, Mr. Lin said,
adding that he expected the invention to be a hit in environmentally conscious
markets like those in the United States, Japan and Europe.

One drawback: edible bowls start to leak three to four hours after coming in
contact with boiling water.

Mr. Lin said the goods would sell for 19 cents each.

He said his company also planned to produce edible spoons and boxes to replace
Styrofoam boxes used by fast- food chains.
 Project Patradya

According to a typical Indian's logic - a pile of garbage is equivalent to a dustbin!

When you visit a beautiful place and see garbage just piled up, do you feel helpless
and annoyed?

What if you could eat your cutlery after eating in it? Well it's not a flight of fancy
anymore! Enactus KMC saw this as an immense opportunity and came out with
this innovative idea of edible cutlery and hence was born,

Project Patradya.

The Afghan community we have collaborated with, resides in Bhogal District,

New Delhi. Through Patradya, we aim to provide them a source of livelihood in a
completely alien nation.
The edible cutlery is both tasty and healthy as the recipe includes a combination of
ingredients like wheat, ragi and millet. The recipe has been finalised after
consulting dieticians and nutritionists.

Project Patradya has been certified by FSSAI to corroborate our product's quality.

After development of the recipe, they started to teach their community members
the technique of making edible cutlery. Proper emphasis was laid on popularizing
their unique product to respective clients that included cafes and restaurants
concentrated in North Campus. Free samples were distributed to check their
product's feasibility. The feedback provided has been of immense help to the team.

The edible cutlery is both tasty and healthy as the recipe includes a combination of
ingredients like wheat, ragi and millet. The recipe has been finalized after
consulting dieticians and nutritionists.

Project Patradya has been certified by FSSAI to corroborate our product's quality.

They plan on improving their product by incorporating more flavours and

increasing the nutritive value even more. One of their extensions: an edible
chocolate bowl has received much praise from bakeries and ice Cream parlours for
the added X-factor it gives to their products.

Objectives

1. Environment friendly alternative:

With Project Patradya, our aim is to provide an environment friendly alternative to

the plastic menace by giving an edible makeover to the concept of cutlery.

2. Empower:

Providing the Afghani women an alternate source of Income.

3. Enhance:
Enhancing the salutary quotient of food by virtue of healthy ingredients used in
making these cutleries.

Defence Food Research Laboratory

The Defence Food Research Laboratory (DFRL), set up in Mysuru under the
Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), has developed cutlery
that can be consumed after use.

Edible bowls, spoons and forks will replace plastic and steel cutlery as an
environment-friendly option for the Indian Armed Forces.

Since the patent application for these indigenously developed cutlery is being
processed, Pandit Srihari S, technical officer of DFRL, said that he could not
reveal the material used in their making. "When you eat an ice cream, you eat the
cone, too. We produced this cutlery with the same thought-process,” Srihari said.

The work on the project began a year ago. Scientists at the lab tried out different
materials, testing how long they could maintain form before the bowls and spoons
got soaked and crumpled. The material used to make the cutlery has negligible
amount of calories, Srihari said.

They have also tried to make the cutlery as light as possible to reduce the burden
on soldiers, who will be the end-users. "Since we are a defence organisation, we
develop products for use by the Army. But, as with all our other products, we will
transfer this technology to any private players who may be interested. That way,
civilians will also be able to benefit from our eco-friendly cutlery,” Srihari said.
Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar and other officials were served food in the
edible cutlery and they appreciated the product, he said. Once they receive the go
ahead, they will produce the cutlery on a larger scale and provide it to the armed
forces.

Set up in 1961, DFRL conducts research to produce lightweight and nutritious

rations for Army, Navy, Air Force and Paramilitary forces. Technology for many
of their products such as instant idlis, upma, ready-to-eat dal fry, paneer curry and
so on have been transferred to the private sector.

Edible Cutlery facts:

 The shelf life is 18 months for best crispy taste, but if it is not opened from
shrink wrap it can last even 24 months. It can lose crispiness if packet is
opened and spoons left in open. They can still be edible. Since this is made
with flours it can be contaminated by frequent touching and in open
atmosphere. Do not refrigerate. Do not store near other grains and food stuff
that is prone to decompose fast.
 It can cut through meat, provided you make sure you don’t push it very hard
like you do with stainless steel spoons. After all these are made of flours! If
it breaks it will be at handle so it still can be used.
 It will naturally decompose anywhere between 3 to7 days if insects, dogs,
cows, goats, birds do not eat it. If you pour water on it and leave it in soil/
pots it decomposes faster. You can even put them in your compost pits
safely.
 They can be made with pulp mix of carrot, beetroot, spinach and other
spices. These are value added items and will cost higher.
 It is a baked product hence it will be in shades of brown. They are hard and
crunchy as they do not add any fat, oil, butter, so you will not get any smell
from our cutlery unless we add some essence.
 They will not cause any ill effects if you use them regularly. On the
contrary, the micro nutritional intake will improve. However, if you keep
them in open under humid conditions, they will get soft and there will be
microbial contamination. Hence, these should be stored in dry air tight
containers. No user has ever complained about our spoons doing any harm to
their health so far.
 They do not add much of any ingredients to cause any damage to Health. In
fact they are approved to be consumed by hospitalized patients with BP,
diabetes. Sorghum (Jowar) is highly nutritious and filling millet and is idea
for pregnant women, teething children, growing up children, women with
low hemoglobin and anybody with osteoporosis, arthritis.
 They are not gluten free as we do add some wheat flour but they can
customize for specific clients who need it gluten free by adding corn or
barley in place of wheat.
 It is ideal for babies who keep chewing anything that they reach out to.
Instead a spoon will give them sufficient saliva, nutrition and protect them
from plastic chewy habits and toxins thereof. Since this spoon stem is hard it
 can be held firmly and chewed for a long time by babies. It slowly becomes
softer as they chew and lick it.
 Their samples have gone to Australia, Bulgaria, Canada, Estonia, Germany,
Hong Kong, USA, UK, UAE.

Following are the future designs of the edible cutlery: