The company, founded by Tony Small three years ago in his parent’s garage, manufactures plates, food containers, and coffee cups from wheat husk and straw. It now has six factories in China. The biomass was previously burned, but China’s government has banned the practice due to air pollution, Small tells Stuff.
The chemical-free process washes the waste to turn it into mulch, which is then molded into packaging products. “All that’s used is a heat transfer and the fibre [in the straw] hold it all together,” Small says. “There’s no bleach, no chlorine, no petroleum or oil. It’s literally just wheat straw.”
The wastewater is the then transferred to a worm farm, which sells the worms as fish food and fertilizer.