Dinesh Tadepalli,
Planeteer
Saving the Earth by the Spoonful
Front Burner Foodservice Pitch Competition winner
Dinesh Tadepalli is on a quest to save the planet
from plastics, one edible spoon at a time.
BY JULIE BESONEN
PRODUCER PROFILE
PHOTO LOOP SEVEN
D
inesh Tadepalli, 33, has a sweet tooth and
eats a lot of ice cream. A few years ago,
as he was spooning some into his mouth,
it occurred to him that his ten minutes of pleasure
left a carbon footprint that would last thousands
of years. The plastic spoon he tossed in the trash
would end up in a landfill somewhere or add to the
garbage clogging the ocean. He had no wish to take
away the convenience of a single-use spoon, so
what if he could develop one that was edible?
As it happens, Tadepalli wasn't the first person
who thought of the concept. Some research turned
up a man in India who had started manufacturing
them several years before. Still, the idea didn't leave
Tadepalli. He put it on a back burner, busy with
his career as a hardware engineer in Silicon Valley.
His wife, Sudheshna Vuppala, had just given birth
to their first child, a son. The couple was on the
same page about finding a mission to make the
planet a better place for him. They thought it would
somehow involve the food industry, but their
personal finances weren't in a place where they
could pursue anything too ambitious.
SFA President Phil Kafarakis, Dinesh Tadepalli
of Planeteer, and Diodato Ferraioli of La Doria
S.p.A., celebrate Tadepalli's Front Burner win.
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