incrEDIBLE Eats: Ditching Disposable Spoons

Disposable spoons are thrown away every day without a second thought, contributing to the plastic waste problem. There will be more plastic than fish in the oceans (by weight) by 2050. You can help protect nature by eating your spoon.

incrEDIBLE Eats is on a mission to reduce plastic polluting the ocean by replacing single-use plastic utensils with edible cutlery that are crunchy, sweet and savoury. You have to eat it to believe it. 

Every time you munch incrEDIBLE Eats cutlery, you are helping clean the earth. Each spoon you eat is one less piece of plastic in the ocean. 

There are three things you’ll love about these edible cutlery. Delicious, crafted to be eaten with a warm meal or a tasty ice cold treat. Healthy, made from a mix of wheat, oats, corn, chickpeas, and brown rice. They are dairy-free and non-GMO. Eco-friendly, the spoons have no harmful impact even if you throw them out. They will degrade without a trace. 

“Every piece of plastic cutlery that you and everyone else in the world have ever used is still on this earth somewhere, and it will stick around for 10 generations. As a society we have to be more conscious about our waste. We have to take baby steps towards a cleaner future. Those baby steps might as well be delicious,” says Jack Kneubuhl, Spoon visionary of incrEDIBLE Eats, whose personal spoon flavour favourite is vanilla (with cookie dough ice cream). 

Perfect for soups, desserts, salads, and pasta, incrEDIBLE Eats is currently offering spoons and sporks in chocolate, vanilla, oregano chilli, pepper flavours as well as plain. The non-dairy single-serve 10mg edible spoons are individually wrapped to preserve its freshness. Gluten-free option will be introduced in 2022.

Determining what flavours to offer gets a little tricky when showcasing to the entire world. The sweetness that Americans prefer is too much for many European countries. Once we grow and introduce more flavors these issues will go away, according to Jack.

It took about six months and 70-plus iterations of testing to come up with a recipe that worked. The company will always be tweaking the recipe to produce the best possible cutlery. 

“Our kitchen is actually baking sporks right now. They will be available in the US in January 2022. Later in 2022 we will introduce chopsticks, straws, and coffee stirrers. We don’t have any plans right now for plates… but ultimately we can create any shape that is requested,” enthuses Jack, 32, who’s based in Denver, Colorado. 

Addressing shelf life, breakage during shipping and other issues, Jack discloses that it is very difficult to create a utensil that needs to be hard enough to use, but soft enough to eat. Its products are designed to hold their shape for 30 minutes in a hot cup or cold dessert, which he believes is the perfect amount of time. It is inevitable that breakage will occur. The spoons are always going to be too hard for some people... and not hard enough for others. 

“The important thing to remember is the cause behind the spoon. For every spoon eaten there is one less piece of plastic in the world,” emphasises Jack.

No need to worry about these spoons dissolving or becoming unusable while eating your hot soup or frozen yogurt. They stay firm enough to allow you to enjoy your meals for about 25-30 minutes before they get soft.  

The spoons have a one-year storage life at room temperature and low humidity. Store in a cool and dry place. Humid environments cause the spoons to soften. Placing the spoons in the fridge for a few minutes before serving will give them an extra “crisp”.  

incrEDIBLE Eats (a.k.a. incrEDIBLE Spoon) is a small group of individuals from various backgrounds and cultures. Although they were a world apart, their shared passion for sustainability led them to find one another from around the globe. Together they pledged to surmount the plastic problem that has been ignored for too long. 

Its founder, Dinesh Tadepalli, is a nature-loving entrepreneur, an angel investor and a hardware engineer. He is a problem solver. One day as he was getting ice cream with his kids he noticed all the wasted plastic spoons in the bin and decided to do something about it. Favourite pairing: vanilla spoon with butter pecan ice cream. (Dinesh cleans the take-out boxes so they can be recycled properly).

Dinesh Tadepalli

Kruvil Patel, chief spoon maker, is a mechanical engineer and a fine artist who wants to make the world plastic free. He is a risk taker, fun loving, adventurous. Favourite pairing: oregano chili spoon with alfredo pasta. (He uses plastic-free products only to contribute towards reducing plastic waste).

Spooning since March 2019, Jack geeks out on aerospace, renewable energy, upcoming technologies, and beautifully crafted spreadsheets. Favourite pairing: vanilla spoon with a side of lots of Tequila. (He sings Disney songs in the shower).

Kruvil Patel

Jack Kneubuhl

Why spoons? “Our partner in India, Kruvil, felt that out of all the utensils, spoons would be the easiest to create. Fork tips break too easily and chopsticks are tricky. The idea of edible cutlery has been around for years, but the ability to produce it on a large scale is something that has not been done before,” Jack explains.

But is it really possible to eliminate all plastic utensils - at least spoons - with incrEDIBLE options? Will they be readily available on-demand?   

Jack is optimistic: “Currently, plastic cutlery is made so inexpensively that all alternative products are a luxury. A cheaper technology would have to emerge in order to eliminate plastic completely. 

Our edible products are a fantastic alternative, and they will reduce the amount of plastic our society depends on, but they are not the “end-all” answer. 

Edible cutlery is going to be a household name in 5-10 years’ time, but it will take a shift in global demand for that to happen. We are up for the challenge though.” 

He adds: By 2022 we are looking to have distribution set up in the UK, Australia, Canada, Ireland and Mexico. I personally have been contacted by individuals in over 40 different countries that are interested in importing our products. We receive more interest from international countries than we do within the US. A large part of this is attributed to changing legislation. Canada, for example, is starting to phase out one-time use plastic this year, yay!” 

Presently sold online via Amazon, Jack is confident that it will just be a matter of time that incrEDIBLE Eats will reach other retail outlets. 

“We are in discussions with many food brokers, grocery chains, and independent small businesses. We don't have a timeline yet of when they will be available in your neighbourhood store... but you can speed up the process by asking them to carry our products!”

In 2010 alone, eight million tons of plastic trash ended up in the ocean. Imagine how that number could have exponentially increased since. Ocean plastic is a global problem. 

According to a 2017 study, most of the plastic waste is washed into the ocean by rivers, with 90% of all plastic waste being carried to the ocean by ten rivers, eight of which are in Asia. 

Regardless of where the waste originates, ocean currents distribute it all around the globe into five main gyres that create giant garbage patches. 

incrEDIBLE Eats is on a mission to remove plastic waste from the ocean. It takes its environment commitments seriously by participating in certified plastic projects to further help save the planet. 

A proud member of Impact Collective, the edible cutlery company is carbon negative, not just carbon neutral. It offsets 200% of the carbon and plastic that it used to move products from its kitchen into your home.

Sustainability efforts extend to its packaging and wrappers to ensure no ancient and endangered ecosystems or forests were logged to produce the paper, while making sure the edible cutlery are safe for consumption.  

Single-use plastics account for 40 percent of the plastic produced annually. Every year, about 8 million tons of plastic waste escapes into the oceans from coastal nations. That’s the equivalent of setting five garbage bags full of trash on every foot of coastline around the world. (National Geographic)

To help protect and preserve planet earth we can start ditching disposable non-biodegradable plastic cutlery. Every little effort adds up. 

Debbie | ws

Images: incrEDIBLE Eats   

Sources:  Impact Collective  | Sustainable Efforts  |  National Geographic