Breakthrough in Disposable Utensils?

The development explained at left may sound noteworthy, and I don’t discourage these people or anyone from doing whatever they can to slow the rate of environmental degradation.  And yes, keeping plastic out of our waste-streams is a great cause.

But let’s look at this for a second.

Who, and at what expense, both financially and environmentally, is going to round up all these avocado pits and process them into utensils, then absorb the costs of product marketing and distribution? How viable will this enterprise be, especially at very low volume, compared to the $43 billion plastic industry?

I’m reminded of a would-be client, “Fertile Grounds,” who met me a few years ago and asked for my help.  Their idea was to collect coffee grounds from Starbucks’ and process them into organic fertilizer.  I asked how they planned to collect the coffee grounds, and they explained that they would have drivers of small trucks with routes around the nation’s cities, who would drop off this feedstock to processing plants that would dry (over heat–where does the heat energy come from?), bag it, then sell it into the market of hardware stores and large home improvement centers.

Of the two, which idea is more inane? Hard to know.

I told the “Fertile Grounds” folks that I loved their name, but advised them to keep their money in their pockets and look for another business concept.  I didn’t use the word “inane” at all in our conversation.  That’s how to win friends and influence people.  I should have written the book.