Every school year, Milanese children that eat at school consume 13 million sets of plastic dished, cutlery and glasses. This translates into 550 tonnes of trash pilling up - with the equivalent damage to the environment.
Parents and schools have long recognised this problem and parents have offered to equip each child with a ceramic dish that a child could re-use. That, however, creates the problem of needing to wash those dishes.
Well, a businessman from Trentino thinks he has a solution. Tiziano Vicentini is the inventor of Pappami. These are edible dishes - with a taste similar to bread. They can go in a microwave oven and they can be dealt with similarly to other bio-degradable waste. Mr. Vicentini used to manage a catering company and he quickly realised that one of the most annoying and logistically complicated aspects was having to move and wash dishes. Pappami is completely biodegradable and the costs are very reasonable at 30 cents per dish.
Large scale production could begin next spring.
