Song Keng, Channel NewsAsia 11 Dec 08;
SINGAPORE: Come this weekend, ordering your food to dine in or takeaway may leave less of a carbon footprint than in the past.
Import and distribution company CornWare is introducing biodegradable disposable wares.
Made from corn, the prices of these products are comparable to their plastic and styrofoam counterparts.
One outlet of the food court chain Banquet will be using the biodegradable disposable wares from this weekend.
Olive Green Marketing is working with Banquet's other food courts to introduce them at more outlets.
Banquet says the charges for takeaways remain unchanged at 20 cents.
"The biodegradable disposables are carbon neutral. Carbon neutrality is quite a simple concept in the sense that the amount of carbon dioxide that it releases upon incineration in Singapore is at most 32 per cent, as compared to the amount of carbon dioxide released by styrofoam and plastics which is almost 100 per cent," said the executive director of Olive Green Marketing, Aloysius Cheong.
- CNA/yt
A green takeaway at Banquet
Esther Ng, Today Online 12 Dec 08;
WHILE most businesses are cutting back, one company is giving away its products free this weekend, for a good cause — the environment.
At Banquet’s Compass Point branch, OliveGreen Marketing will be sponsoring some 3,000 takeaway boxes. And while they may look like typical styrofoam packs, they are made from biodegradable corn and yam.
The sponsorship, worth $750, is part of Banquet’s pilot study to see how well customers and vendors take to this green product. “We like the fact that these CornWare lunch boxes don’t pollute the environment — it ties in with our green corporate values,” said Ms Noor Hayati Saide, Banquet’s marketing coordinator executive.
The foodcourt chain currently gives customers a 5 per centdiscount if they bring their own container. It will gather feedback from vendors and customers on the CornWare products, before deciding if it will introduce them on a permanent basis.
“I think once people realise that styrofoam is bad, they will want better alternatives,” she said.
Styrofoam takes 100 years to decompose and adds to landfill. It is also said to be a health hazard — styrene, a carcinogen, may leach into the food when Styrofoam is heated, although there are no conclusive studies.CornWare products, by comparison, decompose in 120 days.
According to OliveGreen, CornWare’s distributor, sales have grown by 50 per centsince August when the product first appeared in supermarkets. The firm’s marketing executive, Noorfa’Izah Mohd Saad, said: “This is very encouraging for us, (a sign that) Singaporeans are open to the idea of eco-friendly products. They like that our forks and spoons are strong and don’t break so easily like how some plastic ones do.”
CornWare is available at NTUC (Finest & Xtra), Meidi-Ya, Mustafa, Carrefour (Suntec City), Cold Storage and Sheng Siong supermarkets.
