With plates made from leaves, banker figures out how to rake in the profits
Posted in: Uncategorized
When ex-banker Michael Dwork was doing an internship in India, he observed the local women gathering up dead palm leaves and forming them into platters by pressing them in roadside ovens. “They looked absolutely horrible, covered in mold,” recalled Dwork. “I totally fell in love with them. There was no design, there was no sanitary production, there were no 50 other things, but at the end of the day, the concept was really cool.”
Dwork now runs VerTerra Dinnerware, a Brooklyn-based company that produces compostable flatware made from leaves in a factory in India, to the tune of a million units per month, distributed by the likes of Whole Foods. And his raw materials are largely free: Workers at their Bangalore facility collect fallen palm leaves from nearby plantations, turning them into plates rather than their usual method of disposal–being burned in piles.
Read more about VerTerra’s story, and process, here.
via reuters
Post a Comment