Social Innovation: Banana Leaf Packaging (Environmental Pollution Issues)

 

My social innovation proposal regarding this theme is the usage of banana leaf as a replacement of plastic bags especially non-biodegradable type. This idea emerge after observing the huge number of plastic bags in my house. Moreover, the use of plastic is more prominent in wet market businesses specifically on what I have observe in my hometown.

            What I wanted to do is reduce and replace the plastic bags that were used in packing and wrapping of the fresh food products such as vegetables and fruits with more ecofriendly and biodegradable packaging. One of the idea of the packaging is using banana leaf. As an introduction of implementing this, I would like to suggest to use this banana leaf as a wrapper of leafy vegetables such as spinach and lettuce, long-shaped vegetables such as cucumber, long beans and other type of vegetables that suitable like chilies, lemon grass and others. If this new way of wrapping food product was successful, next step is started to introduce this in the shopped businesses.

            In order to make sure this social innovation works and be able to be implemented in my village. I will closely working with the local sellers that run their business in the wet markets. In the beginning, I will choose 3 sellers in the markets which I think the most suitable because all of this sellers were selling fresh food product like vegetables and fruits. They will be the first groups of sellers that I will working with to ensure that this idea can be implemented and if there is problem arise, I could recognize and try to solve it before started involving more sellers in this. I also will discuss with them on what type of vegetables that they think the most suitable to use this new way of wrapping and packaging. In my opinion, they as the seller must know how and what is the best ways in wrapping and packing fresh food products.

            Besides approaching the sellers, next agenda which is also important is to ensure the raw materials which is the banana leafs itself were available and enough to be used as the wrapper or packaging materials. To make sure this will not cause any problems, I myself will directly contacting and working closely with the farmers that were planting banana trees. Moreover surrounding my village, there are lots of banana’s farmer with at least 3 to acres of banana plantation. The aspect that I would like to discuss with them is how and when we can started harvesting the banana leaf, the interval on each harvesting, type of leaf that suitable to be harvest and lastly is the price of the leaf which I think important because this will add up on the cost towards the wet market sellers. I would be the middle man that negotiating and finding the agreement on the price of the banana leaf.

            I hope by approaching this two parties will help my mission and idea on new way in wrapping and packaging fresh food products using banana leaf. As the conclusion of this social innovation proposal, I really hope this can be successfully delivered and implemented in my village and also the main goals of reducing and replacing the plastic bags can be achieved.

Source: Medium.com