So your heirloom-tomato-Spanish-onion-and-brown-rice paella came
out of the oven picture-perfect. Would you serve it to your delighted
guests on anything other than organic, sustainable dinnerware?
Thanks to Lawrence J. Ohlman III (A/S ’04), you don’t have to
settle for anything less.
Ohlman is founder of EcoLogic Products LLC, whose 2007 launch
of biodegradable dinnerware — the first FDA-approved tableware
made from natural plant fibers — places him on the green edge of
a kitchen revolution.
The enterprise grew from his effort to create an ecologically sensible
flower pot for Ohlman Farm & Greenhouse, the century-old Toledo
company owned by his family. “I figured we could either use it ourselves
or sell it to the stores who carry our bedding plants,” he says.
Other possibilities, Ohlman realized, existed for the material,
created with the help of an overseas manufacturer. He explains,
“I launched The Eco Collection [of tableware] after finding a partner
through the UT Center for Family Business. We pooled our experience
to create eco-minded products from the ground up.”
That’s almost literal. The mocha dinnerware is made from coconut
shells, the natural derives from reclaimed bamboo and rice hulls, held
together with earth-based starch binder.
“We’re partnering with overseas factories to give new life
to products left after food processing,” Ohlman says. “Instead of
incinerating the waste, we’re reclaiming it, clarifying it and making
it into a safe tableware. It’s one hundred percent natural, so it creates
no harm to the environment and it will degrade over time.”
Yes, Lawrence says, “You can crush it up and put it in your garden
to degrade naturally. We also advocate repurposing — what could be
better than using the cups, for instance, as flower pots and saucers?”
The person he calls “our best engineer in the world” can even design
each piece to degrade at a different rate, so flower pots decompose
faster than dinner plates.
No less a personage than Queen of Green Sara Snow featured
the product in Better Homes & Gardens. “In March, we showed at the
world’s largest housewares trade show,” Ohlman says. “Sara agreed
to do a book signing at our booth. It really created quite a media event
— two years ago I wouldn’t have imagined it, and here’s the press
snapping photos so we can’t even move around.”
Company products are carried in eighty stores nationwide, with
plans afoot for spinoffs in housewares, electronics and food services. A
member of the nonprofit 1% for the Planet, Ohlman says, “The better
we do, the better off the planet will be. Green is win-win.”
He knows he’s cutting edge, so when he calls his fledgling company
an upstart rather than a startup, he’s probably right when he adds,
“I think they’re one and the same.”
Learn More About EcoLogic BUY ECO COLLECTION SUSTAINABLE DINNERWARE
