Heaps of single-use plastic in the garbage pushed Samanvi Bhograj, an electrical engineer, into becoming an entrepreneur for biodegradable cutlery. In a world overflowing with plastic, Samanvi Bhograj started a manufacturing unit to make 100 % biodegradable tableware, using plant fibre. Her company,Visfortec, creates cutlery out of sugarcane bagasse.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am a third generation entrepreneur, so business was something that I have always wanted to do,\u201d says Samanvi who studied electrical engineering from MS Ramaiah Institute of Technology followed by an MBA from BvB Marshall University in the US. \u201cI wanted to do business that had societal value and not just have another product.\u201d The 32-year-old seriously contemplated \u201cwhat would make a difference to the city.\u201d<\/p>\n
Born and brought up in Bengaluru, Samanvi has seen the city transform from garden city to garbage city. Piles of garbage across the city caught her attention. \u201cThere had to be a solution to the amount of plastic being used mindlessly,\u201d she says. She believed that when nature has given us everything, solutions to man-made problems too should be found in the environment. \u201cAfter a lot of research online and speaking to people, we initially started with compostable plastic to replace carry bags, but that required industrial composting. So, we thought the second largest pollutant was the single-use disposable plastics such as plates, cups and spoons. That lead me to research natural materials. Our focussed drive and approach lead to Visfortec.\u201d<\/p>\n
The biggest challenge initially was the price. Before the plastic ban, the willingness to pay the extra was not there, as there was a cheaper option. The other challenge was to educate people of the harmful effects of plastic. \u201cPost the plastic ban we see a sea of change in the way people have started approaching alternatives to plastic. We notice people realising that the way our ancestors lived was the right way,\u201d says Samanvi.<\/p>\n
\u201cHowever, we still cater to a small portion of consumers that actually use plastics. In five years time you will see more of these green products coming to people\u2019s rescue,\u201d she believes.<\/p>\n
Research into bio-degradable alternatives to plastic wasn\u2019t easy. \u201cWe initially started with starch-based bio-plastics. Then we moved into bagasse tableware,\u201d says Samanvi. During her search for alternatives she stumbled upon various materials as areca, banana fibre, bamboo, wheat straw and rice husk amongst others. Weighing the pros and cons, bagasse seemed the best alternative. \u201cBagasse is mainly discarded or used as fuel. The other options are used as fodder for animals, so creating value from bagasse was the focus. Karnataka being one of the largest producers of sugarcane, we zeroed in on it.\u201d<\/p>\n
About the longevity of cutlery, Samanvi says, the idea of bagasse tableware was to replace the single-use plastics. They are made to be disposable and they degrade in soil in about 60 days. The company makes 14 products, including plates, cups and meal boxes, with coffee and juice cups being added to the list shortly. The prices vary between 0.95p and \u20b913 per piece. \u201cWe do an average of 15 to 20 lakh pieces a month which is sold online (www.visfortec.com) and our store will be flagged off by this year-end,\u201d says Samanvi who is happy to be speaking to students in schools and colleges about the ill-effects of using plastic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Heaps of single-use plastic in the garbage pushed Samanvi Bhograj, an electrical engineer, into becoming an entrepreneur for biodegradable cutlery. In a world overflowing with plastic, Samanvi Bhograj started a manufacturing unit to make 100 % biodegradable tableware, using plant fibre. Her company,Visfortec, creates cutlery out of sugarcane bagasse. \u201cI am a third generation entrepreneur, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","nova_meta_subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5572],"tags":[11270,5847,14761,12388],"supplier":[],"class_list":["post-55334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bio-based","tag-biodegradability","tag-bioplastics","tag-cutlery","tag-tableware"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55334"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55334\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55334"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=55334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}