Life Goggles: Disposable Leaf Plates Eco Product Review
Editor’s note: With warmer weather just around the corner in the Northern Hemisphere, many of us will start looking for opportunities to cook out and picnic. This week, Life Goggles takes a look at an earth-friendly disposable plate from India… made from leaves. This post was originally published on Monday, March 3, 2008.
Ganesha is an alternative trading outfit that markets the traditional industries of India, working directly with the producers. We’ve more about them in our Paisley Park Jute Shopper Product Review.
The sent Life Goggles a pack of 20 leaf plates to test. But where do you start testing a plate? Kev did an excellent review of some plates made from potato starch, so I did what any self-respecting blogger would do: I copied him.
But as it turns out, these are quite different products. These disposable plates are made from sal and siali leaves, from the forests of Orissa, East India. And as you’d expect, leaves can’t hold that much weight, so doing a test like Kev’s weight bearing experiment with apples was a no-goer; in fact it struggles with a knife and fork on it. For an easy comparison, think of the leaf plates as a replacement for paper plates at parties or barbecues, but bigger. They’re about 30cm (12″) in diameter.
