Behold! A Compostable Pizza Box!
By: Casha Doemland
It’s been a long day at work, and you’ve timed your pizza delivery to the exact moment you approach your front door. You cheerfully hand over the money to the delivery man and step inside, ready to grub on cheesy goodness only to discover half of it's stuck to the roof of the box.
Lucky for you, world pizza champion and executive chef Glenn Cybulski teamed up with World Centric to create a container that not only delivers greatness but is at one with the environment. Say goodbye to overly greasy and soggy crust with the invention of PizzaRound. This specially crafted compostable pizza container is made from 80% sugarcane and 20% bamboo, materials that work as an insulator to regulate moisture and temperature.
Thanks to the fresh crust dimples and pre-cut channels, air can pass through the crust while the grease falls to the bottom, ensuring a supreme level of crispiness. Not only do the box’s grooves serve as a guide for cutting, the container can be heated up to 45 minutes at 450 degrees.
After you’re done enjoying your pizza, feel free to throw the box into your home compost bin or drop it off at your city’s industrial composting facility. “We quote 90 days in a commercial compost facility,” adds Mark Marinozzi, VP of Marketing at World Centric. “It’s been our experience that in home compost facilities, depending on where you live, you can see our compostable fiber products break down in 30-45 days.”
All of this magic with no tents, tissues or liners clogging up landfills or running up the costs.
Before this compostable bundle of joy came into the world, Cybulski did his research, and what better place to take notes than in Italy, home of the Neapolitan pizza. “Being in Italy, all we saw was people walking up to the pizzeria on a crowded back alley and picking up their pizza and leaving,” he adds. “So, I studied that first and found that while there is a never an ‘as good straight out of the oven,' it's still a phenomenal pizza and it traveled well in the initial studies.”
Yet, with every creation comes a challenge, and for PizzaRound, that meant helping restauranters understand the importance of a product that not only creates a positive impact for the environment but also improves the product it's carrying. Once they found a way to market that, it was smooth sailing from there.
PizzaRound is set to hit the market as early as this summer, and companies have the option to print their logo on the lid in two colors. “We have limited capabilities as far as printing, and we’re looking to overcome that,” states Marinozzi. “We’re looking at having more sophisticated technology for the future. But, a pizza company can currently print their logo and whatever graphics they want on the top of the lid.”
While we don’t know which of our favorite pizza joints are making the environmental switch, we do know PizzaRound has a lot of eager customers. Be sure to keep your eyes peeled for a pizza box that can break down in your own compost bin and won’t leave unnecessary trash in a landfill.