Aspenware

The Working Forest magazine, Fall #2 2008 - Vol. 12 #7

Friday Nov 07, 2008

By 

Ron Grech

With a growing movement towards waste reduction and being environmentally consciousness, the market is ripe for a biodegradable alternative to plastic forks, spoons and knives, says Brian McNaughton, Apsenware’s manager of forestry and fibre supply.

Aspenware, based in Lumby, B.C., produces disposable cutlery made primarily from western birch and paper birch and trembling aspen.

"It’s a two-ply product, two pieces of veneer stuck together using an edible adhesive," said McNaughton.

It’s then laminated with a flavourless, confectionary glaze commonly used to coat candies.

The fact it is biodegradable material – wood – is its strongest selling point.

"Definitely more people are thinking about being environmentally conscious and this is a disposable product people can feel good about."

The utensils are produced in British Columbia but McNaughton said the product can be made anywhere trees grow.

The product is made from hardwood pieces with limited market value or cost.

"We acquire the bulk of our wood from areas that are being logged for other purposes, taking wood and a value added product out of wood that would otherwise have been left in slash piles and burned or left to rot," said McNaughton. "We purchase most of it from commercial firewood cutters."

Since the cutlery is small, it doesn’t require large pieces of raw material which lends itself to small scale harvesting and using scrap wood.

The product, he said, has amazing market potential.

"There’s a worldwide market and the numbers are quite staggering."

In North America alone, he said, more than 100 billion individual pieces of plastic cutlery are used and thrown away every year.

Aspenware, launched in 2003, is widely recognized as a success story in the growing field of value added wood product industries.

McNaughton was invited to speak at the Growing Forest Value conference held in Thunder Bay in mid October. The focus of the conference was on value-added products and its potential for opportunities in Northern Ontario.

McNaughton said there is a variety of other hardwood species that could be used to make disposable cutlery and Ontario has the necessary raw materials for a similar business to start up there.

"In B.C. we don’t have a very well developed hardwood industry," he said. "We utilize some of that wood but not to the degree that it seems to be in provinces like Ontario and Quebec."

At the conference in Thunder Bay, McNaughton spoke to a number of people from Ontario and Quebec and "their level of interest was extremely high."

Opportunities also widen due to the fact the utensils could potentially made from a range of hardwood species.

Aspenware has experimented with varied degrees of success "using maple, elder, cottonwood, poplar and sugi which is a Japanese hardwood," said McNaughton

He foresees the company expanding its line of disposable utensils. Currently, McNaughton said, they’re working on a prototype of a disposable serving spoon.

Article courtesy of http://www.workingforest.com/content/disposable-wooden-cutlery-%E2%80%93-cutting-edge-product