Cutting board packaging grows into a garden

Preparing food creates a lot of waste. It's an unavoidable necessity; meats, fruits and vegetables all have parts that are inedible or undesirable. And that doesn't even bring into consideration the packaging that is necessary to get it all into our kitchens. It's what we do with that waste that we can control. Like make it grow into something beautiful (and delicious).

While it would be nice if all unwanted kitchen items (and cooking experiments) could be planted into the ground, hidden from view until they turned into something useful, sadly, that is not usually the case. Having learned to live with embarrassing burnt cookies and overdone roasts--as opposed to burying them in the back yard--it is nice to see that something that does turn into something useful when hidden underground.

The SolarMill Bamboo Cutting Board + Basil Herb Garden encourages positive results both in the kitchen and in the backyard. The company, which prides itself as being able to "produce sustainable products using 100% solar-powered machinery," uses special seeded paper in its packaging. After unwrapping the cutting board and reading the relevant information, the paper gets put into the ground as opposed to the trash or recycling bin. Soon thereafter, the seeded paper spouts and grows into a garden--one that helps with more than just the cooking.