A plastic plate outlives you. Ours barely outlives the leftovers.
Sustainability at Thalys isn't a badge on the packaging — it's the packaging, the product and the business model. Here's the honest maths of where our tableware goes after the meal.
The countdown starts when the meal ends.
Three products, three honest timelines. No asterisks, no "commercial facility required" for the plates — a garden pit will do.
The last bite
The plate has held hot curry at up to +140°, survived the microwave, and done its job. Into the compost it goes.
Plates become soil
Paddy husk plates are home compostable and fully biodegrade within 30 days, turning into nutrient-rich organic manure.
Straws follow
Rice drinking straws — rice flour, corn starch and tapioca — are kitchen compostable and biodegrade within 60 days.
Cutlery completes the cycle
The rice bran cutlery is industrially compostable: 95% biodegrades in 90 days and 100% within 180 days.
Still here in the year 2400
A conventional plastic plate used for the same meal would persist for centuries, fragmenting into microplastics along the way.
Thalys vs. the plastic it replaces.
| THALYS TABLEWARE | SINGLE-USE PLASTIC | |
|---|---|---|
| Raw material | Paddy husk, rice bran & rice flour – renewed every harvest | Fossil-fuel derived polymers |
| Time to disappear | 30–180 days depending on product | Hundreds of years, then microplastics |
| After use | Organic manure · cattle, fish & poultry feed | Landfill, incineration or the ocean |
| Hot food & microwave | Plates handle −10° to +140° and the microwave | Can leach chemicals when heated |
| Who profits upstream | Paddy farmers, paid for their crop residue | Petrochemical supply chains |
| Regulatory outlook | Aligned with India's single-use plastic restrictions | Increasingly banned across states and formats |
Waste is only waste if you waste it.
Our supply chain is a loop, not a line. Each turn of the loop pays a farmer, feeds a table, and enriches a field.
- Crop residue is purchased instead of burned – cleaner air for farming communities.
- Production uses natural, organic additives – no plastic lamination on our plates.
- Used tableware returns as manure or feed – closing the nutrient loop on the same farms.
days for a plate to become manure
agricultural origin across the range
second lives: manure, feed, compost
plates sent to landfill by design
Make your next event a zero-plastic one.
One switched buffet keeps hundreds of plastic plates out of circulation. We'll help you plan the quantities.