Transforming Waste into Utility: A Critical Investigation of Edible Cutlery as a Sustainable Alternative

Abstract

Plastic-cutlery can be replaced by creative and eco-sustainable edible cutlery based on innovation. Stale bread is a major waste and can become a strong yet biodegradable cutlery as alternative to plastic disposables. The present study was done to develop edible cutlery with stale bread, lentils and wheat in different ratios. Five treatments were prepared for comparison study. After edible cutlery development, proximate, mineral, microbial, texture and sensory evaluation was done. A required statistical procedure was done after data collection. T3 have highest mean value for protein 11.4% and ash 2.62% while T5 have highest mean value for fiber 15.03% and T1 have highest mean value for fat 10.42% in physico-chemical analysis. T5 and T4 showed highest mean values for iron 5.03 ± 0.02 mg/100g and zinc 2.31 ± 0.03 mg/100g respectively. All treatments were in safe limits for microbial analysis under 1000 CFU/g. T3 was having least mean value of microbial count (200 ± 1.24 CFU/g). T3 showed highest mean value of hardness (170.2 ± 3.9 N). T3 was the most accepted according to mean value 8.33 ± 0.58% of sensory analysis. The cutlery produced in this research is being discovered to be tasty, nutritious, healthy and environment friendly plastic alternative.