Sydney’s Heliograf reveals ‘Holy Carp’ eco-friendly soy sauce fish alternative
Sydney designers have created a compostable version of the iconic soy sauce fish after South Australia banned the plastic original, attracting worldwide attention.
When the South Australia government banned the tiny plastic fish-shaped soy sauce bottles last month, Sydney design studio Heliograf saw the moment had arrived for their Holy Carp sauce container.
Heliograf’s founders, Angus Ware and Jeffrey Simpson, had been long fascinated by the little plastic containers as a cultural icon and the waste they generate.
“I was always very perplexed about those little soy fish and the kind of cruel irony that something shaped like a fish could go into the ocean, harm marine life, and then end up as microplastics back in the sushi that we eat,” Mr Ware said.
In 2020 the studio released its flagship product, the fish shaped Heliograf Light Soy Lamp, made from at least 75% recycled ocean-bound plastic.
“The lamp is made from recycled oceanbound plastic,” he said.
“For each lamp we sell, we fund a 2kg plastic clean-up in those same places that don’t have formal waste management.
“So far we’ve just crossed 32 tons of plastic cleaned up. We sell those lamps all over the world as well.”
Heliograf is a socially driven design studio focused on transforming environmental waste into objects of beauty and utility.
“There’s a sort of whole spectrum of designs that we’re working on all the time to try and make the sushi experience, and takeaway in general, completely plastic free,” he said.
A Home Compostable Alternative
When SA announced the ban on plastic soy-fish bottles, Heliograf accelerated development of its plant-based soy sauce container.
“We’ve designed this home compostable alternative to the little soy fish,” Mr Ware said.
“We sort of knew plastic bans were coming and then saw that there’d been such a kind of positive response to it … and realised, you know, we had this concept kind of working away. But we brought it … kind of sped up a bit.”
The new container looks similar to the little fish millions of Australians have squeezed over their sushi rolls, but it’s made from sugarcane pulp and can go straight into a compost bin.
“We brought it out … just to … say that there is actually a solution out there and it’s coming soon,” Mr Ware said.
“The pots are home compostable. We want people to know that they can go in their composting bin if their council accepts it or otherwise return to a, like, organics collection in their local area.”
Each fish holds 12ml, the same as the classic plastic version, but the new model arrives empty and is filled fresh in-store. “We’ll have stock hopefully in January next year. We’ll make them available nationally,” Mr Ware said.
Overwhelming online buzz
The Holy Carp! design has already generated buzz online. “The reaction has been really positive. We’ve had like millions of views. I think we just crossed 8 million views across Instagram and TikTok of our content in the last month,” Mr Ware said.
“It’s been phenomenal. And we’ve had inquiries from all over Australia and the world.
“We’ve had inquiries – right from big sushi chains down to just individuals who are saying hey can I just have some and I’m going to take these to my local sushi shop and say ‘would you guys consider using this’?”
Mr Ware is expecting the final product will be available from early next year.
“It’s going into production. in the next couple of weeks,” he said.
“We’ve one more little tweak we need to make to the design to make it even better.”
“Then we’re going to press go and we’ll have stock hopefully in January next year.”
“We’ll be making them available nationally.”
Former tech darling Thinxtra in race to avoid liquidation
