A tribal community has built a cleaner alternative to non-stick pans
It's healthy for you and the planet
The Dhanak Adivasi community lives in the state of Gujarat, on the west coast of India.
They use an alternative to modern non-stick cookware that contains carcinogenic ingredients like polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE).
Their terracotta cookware is made of locally available material. Clay is the primary material used in the process.
It’s sun-dried and then the red ochre paste is applied to it. Then, they are coated with lac, which makes them non-stick. Lac is the resinous secretion of insects like Laccifer lacca, Carteria lacca and Tachardia lacca.
They are then baked for 30 seconds using dry leaves of the Taad tree and they’re ready.
Clay is also known to neutralize the acidity in food, as it’s alkaline in nature.
Would love to know more about your experience if you’re NOT using Teflon Coated ones.
Moving onto this week’s content. So today, we have👇🏽
A startup that’s putting waste cardboard to good use
Another startup that’s giving a second life to plastic
Some good news
100 stories on LinkedIn are over. What next?
I would love to cover your story
📦 Building panel boards out of waste cardboard
You might have noticed…Anything you order online would come wrapped in these 2 materials- cardboard and paper. They are so widely used now that they make up 41% of the world’s waste stream. We might flatten them out and throw them in the recycling bin but most of them, unfortunately, end up in landfills or are incinerated. While this is happening, we are cutting down millions of trees to produce more cardboard and paper packaging.
Let’s put them to use…Folks at Unwasted Limited decided to collect bales of waste cardboard, and other waste packaging material and convert them into Neverwaste™ boards, an alternative to wood-based panels. It’s a patented product that is manufactured by refining and modifying the fibres of manmade cardboard. It can replace new wooden material used in industries like construction, furniture, kitchens and flooring.
This prevents the chopping of new trees and keeps the cardboard boxes away from landfills.
These boards can be machined like standard wood boards and are heat and water-resistant.
At the end of their life, they can be remade into new material, and the reuse cycle continues.
Doesn’t end there…Neverwaste factories are situated close to their raw material, which is waste cardboard, which makes them even more sustainable. Their first factory is in Jutland, Denmark which runs on 100% renewable energy. At full capacity, it would save 170,000 trees and 150,000 tonnes of CO2 from entering the air annually.
🔁 Giving another life to plastic
Not easy…On every piece of plastic, you would have seen those recycling symbols with a number inside them. I recently learnt that if the number is 1,2 or 5, there are higher chances of it getting recycled. Otherwise, it would be redirected to a landfill mostly. And this sorting happens manually at the sorting facilities, where your trash reaches. Add paper and metal to this mix and it becomes messier.
Reuse first…Canadian startup Unwasted Trash wants to raise awareness around the complexities of recycling and promote reuse. They work with local and national sorting facilities and move the plastic that can be reused out of the waste stream. They then grind, melt and pelletize it so that it can be used again.
From these pellets, they create beautiful and functional furniture pieces.
They are designed for industrial, commercial, and residential needs.
This provides a second life to plastic.
Ambitious…They are on a mission to reduce the amount of plastic entering our oceans in Canada by 75% before 2025. To reach there, apart from reusing plastic, they create purpose-driven awareness and education platforms to engage people, communities, and establishments on recycling awareness.
😹 Some Good News
🌲 Saving Wallets and the Environment: French government to launch grants to repair home electronic goods
☀️ Turn up the heat: Germany to ban oil and gas heating for new houses from next year
🚪 Climate Quitting: One-third of young people in the U.K. have rejected a job over employers' weak ESG credentials
⏭️ 100 stories are over. What next?
So here’s what I have been doing on LinkedIn, in case we are not connected there-
And here’s a sneak peek into the database that I have been creating. This would have all the brands that I have written about in my newsletter or/and on LinkedIn + a few more
Would you want me to add some specific information to this that would help you easily navigate this list? Let me know by replying to this email
🔦 I would love to cover your story
If you’re a brand that has planet Earth as a stakeholder, here are a few ways in which I can help you-
Cover your story in the newsletter and in a LinkedIn post. It’s completely FREE!
Help you with your long-form content- newsletters, blogs and articles
Thanks for reading today’s edition. If you have any thoughts or questions, feel free to write to me by replying to this email.
Have a great weekend and see you next week😊