My name is Michael Dwork the Founder of VerTerra. To address your comments, yes these are based on traditional plates used at Ashrams in South India, we have never hidden nor denied that. The dofference is that ours are sterile. The products at a quality level used in India are illegal to import to the US do to health issues. The process to sterlize the leaves and finished products took us 2 years to invent. When most peopel travel abroad to places like india they believe they get sick from the food, the reality ios they get sick from the lack of hygenic conditions surrounding teh products tehy are eating off of, banana leaves, pani puri plates. We far from cover our emplyee cost on 13 packs of products. You don’t just make a product in India and show up with it in the US, there are no less than 20 types of insurance, a dozen certifications for health and safety, shipping , logistics, R&D, design, and a lot of other things that go into starting a busienss, plus we own our own factories in Asia we do not oursource any aspect of production. There is no way in todays world to make the outsized profit you are implying we make, in fact we barely break even. We won’t do well until we can scale up and be making 10’s of millions of these a month. Additionally your wrong math has errors in it at $1200 per month and a price of $10 we need to sell 120 units not 13, but those salery numbers are far from correct.

Additionally something you and others seem to miss is that “green” products cost more becuase teh companies making them are small and have little sell through. If I could have the production efficiency of paper or plastic companies and the sell through, locations and all the other benefits they have my product would cost the same. The reality is that all the sales of environmentally firendly single use dishware counts for no more than $100 million while the general paper plastic dishware isndustry is more than 100x the size.

Hope all your questions are answered.

What I do not understand (and which might have lead me to the comment on the blog) is this entire ‘Green’ hype,which is a bit too much. ‘Green’ does not mean spend more money, which is exactly how things are shaping over. Suddenly ‘khadi’, which till 10 years back use to cost half a dollar for a meter has gone up to 3 dollars per meter (Indian market cost), because suddenly the world realizes it is ‘green’.

Similarly, the only thing that I do not agree is the costing of the plates.
The factory is India, raw material(leaves) is plenty and very cheap since it is usually thought of as waste, setting up things are cheap, electricity is $.05 per unit. As of labour cost, a software engineer gets a salary of 10,000USD per year, which converted to INR is quite enough. These guys must be getting some 1200USD per person, max. Verterra sells 13 packs and they make up for the annual salary of one employee. The courier cost(per kg) is some $30 for UPS and some $17 for some local India courier.
The initial costs are not that high, but the end product is priced way too much. And people will buy it because its green.
Everyone knows that ‘green’ is good then why I or anybody else have to spend way extra money for it?

I consult for Verterra, and can tell you that they say right on the site that these plates were inspired by the plates you’re talking about, no hiding that. However,they are a much improved version of those, able to be washed and reused multiple times, rather then discarded after one use. They can be used in an oven for baking, 45 minutes at 350 degrees. They are toughened by a low energy tempering technique, and there are three layers of leaves, able to provide stability and moisture resistance. And they are UV sterilized, making for a clean, pure eating experience. Verterra’s employees are paid a fair wage and have access to health care.