Kat Nouri has a love-hate dating with plastic.
As an artist and product dressmaker, she’s enamored with its transparency and the unending inventive makes use of for it. However as a mom, and an environmentally-conscious shopper, she’s disgusted by means of it.
“Plastic is a huge a part of our day-to-day lives. There is not any denying it,” stated Nouri. “However each time we use extra of it , we are harming ourselves and Earth.”
So she’s doing one thing about it.
On Thursday, Nouri unveiled Stasher, a line of sandwich baggage made completely of silicone, a herbal subject material product of sand, rock and oxygen.
Comparable: Extra plastic than fish in oceans by means of 2050
Like plastic sandwich baggage, the silicone baggage function the similar pinch-press, air-tight closure. However the comparisons finish there, stated Nouri.
Her silicone baggage are petroleum-free and include no PVC, latex or phthalates.
And whilst 20 million plastic baggage finally end up in U.S. landfills on a daily basis, Stasher baggage are reusable for no less than 3 years and may also be frozen, microwaved or put within the dishwasher.
With dry-erase markers, you’ll scribble notes and labels at once onto the bag’s floor. No longer feeling inventive? The baggage additionally are available in amusing designs — suppose circus, area and monster topics.
Stasher baggage might be to be had on-line in February and in retail retail outlets in March.
Comparable: She’s $10 million nearer to changing plastic bottles
Nouri has been on a private campaign for greater than a decade to lend a hand shoppers change on a regular basis plastic merchandise with more secure silicone-based choices.
She used to be partially motivated by means of her upbringing in Iran.
“My father used to be a champion wrestler and my mom has a PhD in vitamin,” she stated. “So I used to be very acutely aware of well being and vitamin rising up.”
Nouri immigrated to the San Francisco Bay Space when she used to be 10.
“I become rather of a revolt,” stated Nouri. “I used to be simply very inventive and sought after to do issues my method.”
After graduating from UC Berkeley, Nouri took a gross sales and advertising internship at IBM. “However I at all times had just a little industry challenge at the aspect,” she stated. “Other people would continuously inform me I used to be a herbal entrepreneur.”
Nouri introduced her corporate Fashionable Twist in 2005. The corporate makes silicone-based placemats, coasters and quite a few child pieces, together with bibs, cups and meals packing containers.
“As shoppers, we center of attention extra on what we devour,” stated Nouri, who has 3 children. “To me, particularly as a mother, it used to be simply as necessary to judge the place we’re placing our meals. I used to be packing 3 lunches an afternoon in plastic baggage.”
Nowadays, Fashionable Twist is successful, generates about $10 million a yr in earnings, and its merchandise are offered in over 4,000 outlets national.
Comparable: No actually. This pencil grows right into a tomato
Nouri stated Stasher baggage are a herbal evolution of her imaginative and prescient for a plastics-free global.
She spent 3 years and $500,000 researching and growing the silicon sandwich baggage. “It used to be a large funding for us on the time and I just about went broke,” she stated.
The silicone baggage (which promote for $12.99 to $14.99 apiece) do value relatively just a little greater than a field of disposable plastic baggage. Nonetheless, she’s hopeful that the long-term financial and environmental price of the silicone baggage will sway shoppers to shop for them.
Within the intervening time, Nouri is already making plans to increase the Stasher line with different sizes later this yr.
“I am hoping that those baggage can transform an emblem of the way we’re rethinking plastic and taking good care of our planet,” she stated.
CNNMoney (New York) First revealed January 28, 2016: 8:00 AM ET
