We all know Singapore is a food haven. You can find anything here – any dish, any cuisine, anything at all. And thus, it’s automatically in our blood to be food maniacs! Our pride and joy are probably our neighbourhood hawker centres.
And even as we went into a two-month-long Circuit Breaker, it is no surprise that hawker centres were still open for us to dapao our favourite local guilty pleasures. This also explains why during this very Circuit Breaker, we generated an extra 1,334,000 kilograms of plastic waste, according to a study conducted by six alumni students from the National University of Singapore’s Master of Science. You read that right. As an island itself, we produced that much plastic waste in just two months. I don’t know about you, but I surely am freaked out.
Plastic. This dreadful word is enough to spark panic among us all. It’s so incredibly damaging to the environment and our biodiversity – easily destroying marine life and polluting our planet. It has, unfortunately, become such an integral part of our daily lives, evidently seen from our plastic bag to tupperware collections at home, that eradicating plastic from our lives seems virtually impossible, right?
Wrong! Singapore Management University’s 30-year-old graduate, Anna Lam has tried to cut down on her own plastic consumption to relieve our environment. But, she took this a step further and wanted to rally people along with her to do the same. She made her very own start-up company called Crunch Cutlery, which manufactures and sells edible cutlery disguised as superfoods!
Anna has had this plan brewing for a long time, but it’s not always easy to execute an environmental miracle, duh. Jokes aside, passion burned in Anna’s soul, which inspired her to keep experimenting to achieve success. Many trial-and-error attempts and various recipes later, Anna had, at last, come up with the first version of the Crunch spoon.
But there seemed to be a problem with it because, for something so valuable to our environment, the sales were disappointingly low. Therefore, she decided to change up the recipe such that the spoon itself is valuable to our diet.
Hence, came the idea of superfood cutlery! Cue the applause!
Along with her co-founder, Sean Neo, Anna came up with eight unique flavours of superfood spoons that you can enjoy with your next meal. The flavour from the spoon assimilates with your food, and adds a new dimension to your scrumptious meal.
The flavours, you ask? Well, for those with a particularly sweet tooth or those looking for the perfect pairing with their next dessert, you can choose between Blue Pea Lychee and Pink Strawberry, both at $11 for 8! For the health-enthusiasts, you’ve got the choices of Green Tea Fibre Rich, Gluten-Free Buckwheat, or Beetroot Wholewheat. For some extra flavour, you can choose to oomph it up on the spice with the Spicy Fibre Rich spoon! All of these are sold at $13 for 8 pieces. And they have also introduced their newest flavour, Tomato!
Every spoon is handbaked with hopes and dreams for a future that isn’t compromised by our foe, plastic, by Anna herself. With her startup gradually taking off, thanks to the support she’s received, she has been able to move her baking site from her home kitchen, to a co-shared baking facility at The Muffinery!
And that’s on growth and evolution – something we must strive for as well to evolve into a plastic-waste-free nation.
Anna also hopes to lead Crunch Cutlery into the international market. With all my heart, I hope she succeeds because I truly believe that this is a solution that will help our world. We know that while plastic is now an important part of our lives, it has also plagued our biodiversity and environment.
There are many other ways you can reduce your plastic consumption in your daily life.
Firstly, when you go shopping for anything at all, bring along a recyclable bag or simply a larger bag in which you can fit everything you purchase, rather than using plastic bags. Instead of using plastic straws, bring along your own metal or bamboo straws with you. Shop from brands that incorporate recycled plastic in their products, as this makes use of the plastic that has already been wasted and is sitting on our planet for another few hundred years.
And purchasing your spoons from Crunch Cutlery is another way you’re helping this world that we inhabit.
Click here for more information and behind-the-scenes tidbits about the Crunch Cutlery spoons! You can also follow their Facebook and Instagram pages to keep up-to-date about their newest endeavours!
Let this sink in: one meal at a time, one spoon at a time, you’re changing the world. How do you want it to change?
