Eddy's Good News: Start-up business making biodegradable polystyrene from rice stubble!

Virgin Radio

24 Mar 2023, 11:24

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Friday 24th March 2023

Encouraging news from India where a clever start-up business is double winning, making biodegradable polystyrene packaging from rice stubble which farmers usually burn.

Say ‘namaste’ to Arpit Dhupar, who was inspired by a picture his little nephew drew of a pastoral scene with a grey sky. The child ignored the blue pencil because the sky is always grey where they live because millions of tonnes of leftover rice stubble is burned every year.

We already know that polystyrene is un-recyclable and one of the worst landfill culprits, which makes Arpit’s solution a double win. The rice waste has such a high moisture content that you can’t use it for fuel so they burn it and the smoke gets everywhere, so now he’s paying farmers $30 per acre for something they’d just burn, we get bio degradable polystyrene and Indian kids get to paint the sky blue again.

Via: goodnewsnetwork.org