Paula Facó, sold soups on weekends, as she always looked for sustainable alternatives to replace plastic packaging in Ceará.
The opportunity to develop a product for this purpose arose by chance after being selected through the Public Notice from the Creation Laboratory of the Ivens Dias Branco School of Social Gastronomy.
Once mentored by an analyst at Embrapa's Biomass Laboratory, Adriano Mattos, the Ceará native created a biodegradable dish made from waste from banana production.
Since research for the development of the piece was produced in 2019. Paula worked for seven months in search of a sustainable simplified production process.
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In this way, the banana tree pseudostem was chosen as the raw material for making the MUSA (Sustainable Materials and Utensils for Food) line dish.
In fact, the banana genus Musa soon after gave rise to the name of the project, which was built with products from organic banana plantations in the quilombo North East.
As a reward for the work carried out in the community, Paula will promote several workshops for the residents of the Ceará quilombo.
So much so that the topics covered: bread production; alternatives for two main inputs produced in the region, banana and jackfruit; a mini-course on sales on social media.
Now, in addition to Paula, seven researchers, selected through a Public Notice from the Food Culture and Gastronomy Creation Laboratory, worked on projects related to different themes.
Sustainability
As an example to give you an idea, Isaac Moreira worked on a “Tempero Cearense” obtained from string beans and papaya.
Iury de Melo created products based on the full use of artisanal fishing inputs.
Mateus Ferreira highlighted the production of batiputá oil in the Tremembé da Barra do Mundaú indigenous community, in Itapipoca.
Fernanda Soares created a fermented vegetable cheese from cashew nut waste.
Vicente Monteiro developed yeasts from the Caatinga biome and finally Marina Antonácio developed a manual for creating Zero Waste kitchens.
