Around the table are scattered knives, bowls, cutting boards, tape, funnels and bags of hemp powder, mushroom parts and sugar, brainstorming.

Their profile? Create new forms of food packaging to replace the unsustainable designs that modern life seems to rely on: disposable Food Packaging Bottle , lids, straws and bottles.

The students focused on the long-lived crumbs that usually accompany take-out meals. They bake and 3D print straws made of sugar and agar (a gel-like substance derived from seaweed). They use mycelium (thread-like roots of mushrooms) to make hand-shaped bowls. A team designed a black plastic sheet folded into a takeaway container (see above), which can be returned to the collection point, sterilized, and reused indefinitely by the Takeaway Chain Alliance. Another duo made an ingenious cardboard box with a fork/spoon combination that folds on its own, which diners can tear off from the perforated edge (pictured above). After lunch, everything was thrown into a compost bin. Of course, in an ideal world, the compost bin is not far away.

"As the unintended consequences of plastics become more apparent locally and globally, we are seeing a sharp increase in demand for packaging alternatives," said Kate Daly of Closed Loop Partners, a social impact investment fund focused on waste.

Of the 78 million tons of plastic packaging produced globally each year, only 14% is recycled. Lightweight, floatable plastic escapes into our oceans—9 million tons per year—most of which come from developing countries that lack management infrastructure. As these countries become wealthier and inevitably begin to consume more packaged foods, and as more people continue to buy packages and grocery services in a world that is increasingly obsessed with convenience-this has produced a large number of Packaging-and take-out food, the problem is expected to get worse.

This is the case in the catering category. In fact, it is the same in the cosmetic category. The packaging is the same regardless of which type of cosmetics. The 100ml Plastic Spray Bottle is also one of them.