Disposable cutlery production materials and environmental protection ability
Plastic is by far the most commonly used material in the disposable goods market, but that needs to change. Yes, plastic is easy to produce and cheap, but it comes at a high cost to the environment. More than 6 million tons of single-use plastic cutlery are thrown away each year, and the plastic doesn't break down. That means more than 6 million tons of plastic are added to the environment every year. For comparison, a car weighs about a ton. The equivalent of six million cars' weight in plastic cutlery is added to the environment every year, and it's never going to go away.
The two best materials for making disposable tableware are birch and bamboo. Both grow relatively quickly, at 30 and 5 years respectively, and are easy to process. Thirty years may seem like a long time, but it's nothing compared to the 200 million years it took for oil to form
The relationship between wood and carbon
Another reason wood is considered an environmentally friendly material is that it is a carbon sink. This means that wood captures carbon and stores it in its structure. The carbon will stay there until the wood is destroyed. This makes the life cycle of disposable wooden appliances carbon neutral. As much carbon dioxide is stored in wooden cutlery as is released during production.
In some cases, birch trees and bamboo absorb more carbon dioxide than they release when processed into tableware. They actually reduce the total amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This makes wood very environmentally friendly compared to plastic. Birch trees, for example, capture about 48 kilograms of carbon dioxide per kilogram of tree mass. Every 1kg of polypropylene plastic produced produces more than 2kg of carbon dioxide.
Eventually, when the wooden appliance is disposed of, the carbon is released. But unlike carbon from burning fossil fuels, it is not released directly into the atmosphere. Instead, the carbon is either consumed as energy by other living things, slowly released into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, or trapped in the soil. Overall, carbon dioxide will eventually return to the atmosphere, but at a much slower rate than burning fossil fuels.
The Benefits of Wood
Now you may be thinking, why is this important? If the carbon eventually ends up in the atmosphere anyway, how does slowing down this process help?
Simply put, the amount of carbon on earth always remains the same. We can’t make or destroy it. Instead, we can control where it is found on earth using the carbon cycle.
Over the last 100 years the amount of carbon that has been removed from the ground and added to the atmosphere has increased at an alarm rate. This is a natural process, but by burning fossil fuels we are speeding it up exponentially. By using environmentally friendly wooden utensils we can start to reverse the process, slowly putting some of the excess CO2 from the atmosphere back into the ground.
Ultimately, the net negative rate of CO2 production for wooden utensils is what makes them environmentally friendly. But to fully harness these benefits in a restaurant you need to look beyond just purchasing wooden utensils.
The company that sources them, produces them, and ships them plays a key role in how much CO2 is produced. The ideal supplier should be environmentally driven, with a company mission that mirrors your goals.
Gorlando Manufacturing Can Help
Gorlando Manufacturing we have put Environmental and social responsibility are at the top of our agenda. We use Forest Stewardship Council certified wood, have developed an ethical supply chain, and only ship bulk orders to reduce emission rates. We would love to help you meet your sustainability goals.
View our environmental disposable tableware, you can give us contact us, provide you with the data you want
manufacturing plant for disposable ECO cutlery
The trend of disposable environmental tableware
