For eight months, Cheah experimented in a spare room in her mother’s house with materials collected from food processing plants in Tuas. — The Straits Times
SINGAPORE: Her idea for a start-up was called garbage. But it did not stop Karen Cheah from embarking on a mission to tackle the world’s escalating plastic waste and food waste problems at the same time – the company she founded uses food waste to make reusable food containers.
She had a brainwave to reinvent food waste in 2018 while she was studying part-time for a master’s degree in science at the Singapor Management University.
As part of an assignment, she was tasked with developing a “hypothetical startup”.
“The question posed was whether I could launch a hypothetical startup where I could solve a global problem with no financial constraints,” she said.
During that time, Cheah, who is in her 40s, was travelling extensively for her work as a full-time app developer for a multinational company.
“During my travels, whether it was to First World or Third World countries, I saw whole communities choking under the weight of garbage, and that garbage was inevitably made up of plastics and food waste,” she noted.
“That was my epiphany. It’s not so much about reducing food waste, but about how we can use items normally branded as garbage to curb the plastic problem.”
When she asked experts at the Digital Life Design Conference in Europe in 2019 whether a new material could be created out of garbage, they said it was a garbage idea because it was “not possible”.
That year, she quit her job and forked out more than S$60,000 from her savings to establish AlterPacks, a climate tech start-up creating reusable, compostable food containers and utensils made entirely from plant fibres.
She has since poured more than S$260,000 into the company.
For eight months, she experimented in a spare room in her mother’s house with materials collected from food processing plants in Tuas.
This included soya pulp, before finally settling on a mix of rice husks, wheat and spent grains – all by-products from food manufacturing that normally go to waste.
AlterPacks’ waterproof food containers have a texture similar to cardboard, and are designed to be freezer-friendly and microwave-safe.
They can also withstand temperatures from minus 18 degrees C to 260 degrees C without compromising their structural integrity.
After they are used for hot food and washed several times, they turn softer and users can choose to compost them.
The company, which manufactures all of its products in China, is also working on containers that can withstand open flames or steaming, which are expected to be launched in 2025.
Since scoring its first deal in 2022, AlterPacks has 10 clients in Singapore including restaurant operator Crystal Jade, Chilli Api Catering, lifestyle conglomerate Como Group and DBS Foundation. — The Straits Times/ANN
