Eco-friendly food packing modules will be unveiled to the consumer market which will benefit banana farmers very much.
The food packaging including eco-friendly yoghurt cups that have been produced using the stem of the banana tree was invented under an experimental basis by the Eco-ma Packaging Pvt Ltd.
During the discussions which took place with Minister of Industries, Wimal Weerawansa recently it was decided to provide the necessary support for the Chairman and Inventor, Eco-Ma Packaging Pvt Ltd, Menaka Ariyarathne to bring the products to the consumer market within a short term. Thus it would be possible to provide eco-friendly and health-friendly food packaging including yoghurt cups to the local consumers and further development would enable them to export the product to the international market as well.
“We have been producing a lot of food packaging using banana stems which are discarded by the farmers after harvesting. This would allow the farmers to value the stem of the banana tree,” Chairman and Inventor, Eco-ma Packaging Pvt Ltd, Menaka Ariyarathne said. Thus this would provide the farmers with an income not solely based on the fruit while promoting the banana farming.
Producing Food packaging using the banana stem will reduce the production and usage of plastic food packaging thus reducing the amount of plastic wastage getting collected to the environment. He said that monthly more than 100 lakhs of plastic cups get produced which can be figured out how much non-degradable plastic waste gets collected to the environment. The banana stem-based eco-friendly yoghurt cups, which is the main product, was designed to reduce that pollution to the environment.
“Apart from that, we have come up with eco-friendly alternatives to another food packaging which are also based on the banana stem,” he added.
With the discussions held with the Minister of Industries Wimal Weerawansa to describe the challenges faced to get this product to the market, it was agreed to provide the necessary support to introduce this product to the market. “Recently we signed an agreement with the Pelwatta Dairy Product Company to promote our eco-friendly yoghurt cup by using it in their production processes,” he said.
