Composting Utensils Let You to Eat (With) Your Veggies
Biodegradable plastics made of vegetable material have been available and in use for quite some time, but it’s easy to use these products without thinking about where they’ve come from. Designer Qiyan Deng combined the practicality of the biodegradable plastics with visual and textual reminders of what they are made of.
The series is called Graft, referring to the melding of natural materials and natural forms. The utensils take on the colors, textures and approximate shapes of natural vegetables. The designer realized that vegetables are lovely in nature, so why not honor the vegetable sources of these objects by using their natural shapes and textures in the items they are made into?
Deng took into account the functions that the objects would be used for. The fork and knife resemble savory foods because that is their most likely use. The cup, reminiscent of a citrus fruit, reflects the fact that sweet beverages are destined to be drunk from it. These lovely objects are designed to give the user pause before throwing them away – they may be compostable, but being made aware of their history somehow makes them seem a bit more precious.
