Edible Straw

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Edible straw is an eco-friendly drinking straw that is 100 per cent plastic-free that is also hypercompostable, gelatin-free, non-GMO, marine-degradable and able to add flavors and nutritional benefits, which is invented with the aim to take the place of plastic straws that have been over used around the world. Although the look and the feeling are relatively similar to plastic straws, they are designed to disappear and categorized as an “organic” product, which means they can be eaten after consuming or tossed into trash bin then disintegrated with the food scraps in the natural environment, particularly ocean. They can last for hours in the beverages and be composted after weeks.

Edible Straw

Basic Information
Material	Plant-based
Firstly introduced	2017

History

The Sorbos Edible Straw

The Spain-based company named Sorbos founded in 2014 by Enric Juviñá, Carlos Zorzano and Víctor Manuel Sánchez has been producing edible straws made of sugar that can be added different flavors. Bartender Víctor Manuel Sánchez firstly made them at home after realizing the gap in the market of straws, then they won 1st prize of the Pascual Startup which has boosted their company promptly.

The Eatapple

The German-based start-up company called Wisefood founded in 2017 by Konstantin Neumann and his two friends has been marketing their edible straws made of apple pomace. The trio started out with an idea of edible straw when they were in a bar and now they have developed it under the name Eatapple. Shortly after that, they registered the patent for their innovation of an alternative for ordinary plastic drinking straws that was sustainable, edible and tasty.

The trio began working on the recipe in 2015 with a failure in their initial materials. They also used an adapted spaghetti maker to make their straws, which produced a small number of straws per day. After improving the production method, they decided to used apple fibres and increased their capacity up to around 10,000 per day at the German Institute of Food Technologies in the northern town of Quakenbrueck and ended up with apple pomace as the main material.

The Eatapple straws can stay in beverage for about half an hour before they become break down and dissolver the apple flavor to the liquid. However, the founders said that the flavor does not have heavy taste, which would not affect much to the taste of drinks apparently.    

Herald Edible Straw

Herald Plastic, an UK-based company, launched their edible straws in the middle of 2017. Six months after their first announcement, the company has announced overwhelming sales success for its range of edible straws and become the UK’s sole supplier of the products.

Yogesh Patel, managing director of Herald Plastic, explained that their straw was the very first and creative product that can provide to numerous standards in the society. Besides being practical, these straws can be cheers that parents may give their children as presents adding to holidays. They could be used at any ages or genders, providing a new experience and strengthening an individual’s drink. For the seller, they provide added value and a point of difference from the competition. They are a real crowd-puller as they are an industry first.

He also added that their edible straws are an antecedent product that will be unequivocally reaching customers and drawing a wider range of audiences with plenty of marketing strategies across all social media platforms.

Lolistraw

Launched as one of the eco-friendly drinking straws, Lolistraw was firstly introduced at the end of 2017 by New York-based startup Loliware women-co-founders Chelsea Briganti and Leigh Ann Tucker, an edible bioplastic company which has been identified after ABC's Shark Tank and nominated as one of the best innovation in 2015, by crowdfunding on Kickstarter and Indiegogo. After their first biodegradable product, Loliware edible cups, they came up with the idea of edible straw replacing the wasted plastic straws over the planet, which is also their main goal.

"We want to replace plastic straws, and Loliware's mission as a whole is that products should be designed to disappear; therefore, if they are to exist at all, our main mission is to make sustainability fun and experiential." says Briganti.

Tucker had told Green Matter that they had made a decision to find a potential solution to settle down the global plastic issues and resolve overused straws. As plastic straws are unable to be recycled, then end up with assembling in the landfills and creating pollution to the oceans. The plastic straw issue which has reverberated upon the whole world was the reason why Loliware started working on Lolistraw.

Mark Cuban, one of the main "shark" investors on the ABC reality television series Shark Tank, has remained on board as Loliware's lead investor and advisor since they are in process to prepare to launch Lolistraw. Until the beginning of 2018, Loliware has been successfully supported over $49,000 on Kickstarter with 1083 backers and over $73,000 on Indiegogo by creating campaigns on these websites to search for supporters.

Yeonjigonji Edible Straw

The world’s first rice flour drinking straw has been developed by Yeonjigonji, a company in Seoul, South Korea, run by Kwang Pil Kim.

Looking for ideas for a new product in early 2017, Kim accidentally read an article about edible cups, the first product launched by Loliware. He finally came up with the idea of an edible straw, which would be made by materials that are most suitable for Korean people. With the target of competing with plastic straws, he manufactured his product in Vietnam for cheaper rice prices and labor costs. After one year and a half, he succeeded in producing the rice straw in August 2018. These straws are completely biodegradable and will be disposed within 100 days compared with 200 years of plastic straw. As they are made of rice flour and tapioca powder, so they can even boiled up and used as noodles.

Vietnam Plant-Based Straws

HungHau Foods, a Vietnamese company based in Ho Chi Minh City has begun making herb-based straws from rice flour as a response to the trend of making plastic-free products.

After 12 months spending on research and improvements, the company manufacture began in November of 2018 in Sa Dec, a city in Dong Thap Province. Lately, it has produced around 100,000 edible straws per day. It was also revealed by Vo Minh Khang, HungHau Foods' General Director, that the company would enhance much more efficient in February of 2019.

Materials

• A mixture of sugar, water, maize starch and gelatin which contain 23 calories per one straw

• Apple pomace
• Corn starch: straws made of sugar, water, corn starch, bovine jelly, aromas, and other substance. The straws, containing 7g of sugar each, also contains protein and fibre

• Seaweed: Loliware chose to make use of seaweed for the straw because it is a naturally renewable resource that does not require land and actually absorbs CO2. Besides, seaweed also combats the effects of pollutants like plastics in various ways. They plan to collaborate with seaweed farmers to develop their product in the future, as well expand other materials made of seaweed-based to take the place of plastic.

• Rice flour: straws made of 70% rice flour and 30% tapioca powder, the rice straws are more solid than plastic ones.
• Rice-flour: The white straws are made from rice, green from amaranth spinach, purple one from beetroot, and black from sesame seeds.
  

Environmental Influence

Plastic straw is one of the most items found on the beach when cleaning up in 2017 reported by ICC and it can harm intensely to many marine creatures . It looks small and useless, however, with a huge number of straws used ubiquitously, it has become problematic to the environment.

It is estimated that over 500 million plastic straws are consumed in America everyday. Australian scientists Denise Hardesty and Chris Wilcox figured that there are about 437 million to 8.3 billion plastic straws on coastlines of the entire world. While other plastic products are recyclable, plastic straws are not always recycled by the recycling process as they have small size and lightweight , which means that they will end up and stay in the ocean for many years. This makes every action toward dropping the amount of plastic waste valuable, particularly looking for replacements even though the contribution is small. In spite of the huge attention on plastic straws on many media platforms, they are surprisingly not the main type of plastic waste. Plastic straws are only equivalent 4 percent of all pollution , adding up only 2,200 tons of 9 million tons in total of plastic waste sent to the water every year. So, despite the moderate contribution of restricting plastic straws, such movements draw more attention about pollution in the society and also provide the awareness of plastic waste’s impact to the planet.

In light of the plastic ban in many countries around the world, edible straw, which can be seen as one of the eco-friendly drinking straw types rather than bamboo straws, paper straws, steel straws, glass straws, is expected to be a solution for the wasted number of plastic straws all over the planet. As the use of straws cannot be replaced for some cases, especially people with disabilities and cutting of straws seems to be not viable, straws will be still provided in bars if asked. It is challenging that which type of alternatives may be the most advantageous or which materials can work the same as plastic but are nontoxic. Edible straws have benefits that overcome the others’ shortcomings. Glass or metal straws which can be reused are sometimes overpriced and forgotten, particularly, steel straws could transfer heat from the beverage. Straws made of paper works effectively but in a short period of time and turn to be mushy eventually, which is also related to forest issues and threats. Bioplastic straws are questionable because of materials. Compostable plastic straws need to be disposed in compost facility conditions, not in the water ^[15]. In the meanwhile, edible straws made of eco-friendly, nutrient, affordable, biodegradable, long-lasting in beverage materials and compostable in the sea water, which are features that make edible straws a worthwhile solution for the plastic crisis. Along with its advantages, it is aimed to replace plastic straws used at high-waste venues, such as stadiums, fast casual restaurants, coffee shops, etc.

Challenges

It could have been a long timeline to successfully convert the idea of edible straws into reality and replace plastic straws. They seem to have been used for a long period of time as they are convenient items for most of groups of people. Banning plastic straws is also disadvantageous as to disable people, single-use plastic straw is an essential tool to help them drink easily and safely . The straws that people with disabilities can use must have the right length, ability to handle the change of temperatures, flexibility, strength and safety, which other alternatives do not satisfy as plastic straws can do even though they look like and feel like plastic ones.

References

This article "Edible Straw" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Edible Straw. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.

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