Curry and Conversation
Kath and I attended a really interesting event the other day called Curry and Conversation, ran by charity Plastic Pollution Awareness and Action Projects and City to Sea.
We got to chat with other eco-warriors and eat curry - what's not to love!
As we all know, the fantastic plastic problem is particularly prominent in the catering industry. Single use food containers, bags, cutlery and other items which get used once often going to landfill and/or end up being poorly disposed of causing tonnes of plastic and an unavoidable litter problem on a local and national level.
The workshop was a space for discussion and highlighting solutions, bringing together knowledge from industry experts, NGOs, and local businesses tackling the issues and those looking for solutions.
The workshop was a space for discussion and highlighting solutions, bringing together knowledge from industry experts, NGOs, and local businesses tackling the issues and those looking for solutions.
There was a really interesting talk on marine conservation by Libby from Tread Lighter. She's a really inspiring woman who cycles around the world (!) on her bamboo bike educating children about the effects that plastic have on our oceans.
We went along because we're big into packaging and we wanted to see if there were any solutions that could benefit EcoStardust and the challenges we face with packaging our Bio-Glitter. Especially launching Bio-Glitter Pure (the quickest biodegrading eco-glitter yet), we're looking for packaging solutions that are the most sustainable they can be.
Throughout the session we brainstormed solutions, demand, systems, alternatives and convenience coming up with blue sky suggestions that could help the industry become more sustainable.
We also got to share a tiffin of delicious Thali Cafe curry - with a huge stack of popadoms to go with it - YUM!
The takeaways (pun defo intended) we took from the event that would apply to EcoStardust were that we should be running a packaging return scheme. We're hoping to roll this out as soon as possible once we iron the obvious issues of recycling old tins, cleaning them to send out again. Either way it's definitely something that we should be offering to our customers.
We're hoping there's a follow up to this event as lots of positivity came out of it and plenty of potential actions to be taken by everyone; on a small level (by say refusing plastic packaging, or taking a tiffin to be refilled) or the industry to step up and respond to demand which is clearly there from people wanting to avoid plastic takeaway food packaging.
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Posted on March 05 2019
