Entrepreneur Invents Plastic Bottle Substitute Made Entirely of Bamboo

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One of the peskiest forms of pollution caused by consumers is single-use plastics; things like plastic bags and disposable plastic water bottles have been clogging up the oceans and doing irreparable harm to our ecosystem for decades.

Companies have started to focus on ways to offer sustainable, eco-friendly solutions in the last handful of years. They’ve come out with stylish and convenient reusable water bottles and reusable shopping bags that help consumers do their part to save the planet without disrupting their daily routines.

Thanks to an Assamese entrepreneur, consumers have a new alternative on the market that should solve a handful of problems all in one fell swoop.

IIT alumnus and Assam resident Dhritiman Bora invented a reusable, biodegradable bamboo water bottle to provide an alternative to all the single-use plastic bottles, innovating a use for the abundance of bamboo grown in the Assam region.

The bottles are sleek and smooth, with an innovative design that boasts a cork stopper to keep it sealed and a hygienic cleaning process during their production that assures they’re perfectly safe for carrying water. They can be cleaned easily by wiping them out and leaving them to dry once every few weeks.

The containers are all-natural and 100 percent biodegradable. So when they’ve outlived their life—Bora estimates they hold up for around 18 months—they can be tossed without feeling guilty about landfills.

Each bottle costs between 590 and 780 Indian rupees, which converts to between $8 and $11 U.S. dollars, considering that each S‘ip by S’well reusable water bottle costs around $20 U.S. dollars.

The bamboo also serves as an insulator, which means that it keeps water cooler than single-use plastics. It’s both a cost-effective and more functional solution.

“Plastic and glass bottles contain toxic elements like lead and cadmium,” explains Bora on the seller page for the bottles.

“After drinking water or other beverages in them, the toxic elements get collected inside your body and may cause harmful effects in the long run.”

“Our bamboo water bottles doesn’t contain any toxic element. 100% healthy for you, your family and the environment.”

Each bottle takes about five hours to make, as Bora takes the cut bhaluka by hand and then boils, dries, and smokes the parts before joining them to produce a complete product. He’s turned the bottles into a family affair—his mother serves as a financier, while his brother Guarav runs the digital side of the operations—but expect things to take off and more employees to be needed soon.

“We are currently producing about 1,500 bamboo bottles a month, way below the demand. If we had a lathe machine, a larger dryer and other tools, we could produce about 8,000 a month. But that is quite a lot of investment,” explained his brother Guarav.

The bottles have caught the attention of consumers as far away as the United Kingdom recently, so Bora is optimistic about the future he’s helping to provide. Now it’s just a matter of seeing how popular this innovation can become.