(Belgian) Fries go bio …
Eric Odinot, a Dutch artist, recently “invented” a new recipient: the biodegradable fry container! Finally someone had the brilliant idea to use potato starch (gained from the potato peels) to manufacture a bio-plastic alternative for the widely used PS (non-degradable plastic) “frietbakskes”.
Just 1 problem: the price … Seems this environment-friendly recipient costs 4 to 5 times more. And no doubt even more than the “one and only paper cone”, which most people in Belgium still prefer. According to a recent article in the Belgian press, Odinot needed 100.000 Euro to produce his first 200.000 “Strandbakjes” (the name refers to the Dutch coastline of Zeeland). He only raised 17K so far …
The “Strandbakjes” are made of a biodegradable plastic, based on potato starch. The material can be injection-moulded like most other plastic items, but once binned, degrade within 2 weeks to a nature-friendly compost.
More on this “invention” in these 2 PDF-files: 1 (flyer) and 2 (the story of the Strandbakje). Both documents in Dutch only.
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This was invented in southern Sweden in the early 90´s by a company named Lyckeby Starkelsen (starkelse means starch in swedish, not by that dutch artist.
The company produces potato starch for different purposes, and the biodegradable container was one of them, although not so succesful.
They sold it to the olympics in Lillehammar in 94, but other than that, it didn´t go so well-to costly, and the containers took too much space.