New use for crop as Mister Rye straws combats plastic waste

What links a rye crop and the humble drinking straw? Find out how farmers are helping this entrepreneur fight the war on waste.

Drink up: Olivia Ransome Gilding, Marion Vigot and Alexis Branlard. Picture: Mike Burton

FOR Marion Vigot, it was the last straw.

Travelling around Australia in a campervan, the French-born entrepreneur saw plastic waste by the truckload littering beaches and the environment.

“Cigarette butts were the most common, then packaging, closely followed by plastic straws,” the 28-year-old says.

“I was shocked at the amount of rubbish because Australians are so well known for recycling.”

Given her entrepreneurial background — she had just come from living in Vietnam for five years where she established a cosmetics start-up — Marion spied an opportunity: to make biodegradable, organic, reusable straws.

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And the solution was in the hands of farmers.

Working with researchers at the University of Adelaide, Marion and her business partner, Alexis Branlard, searched for organically certified cropping farmers growing rye, “the strongest plant available in Australia”, which also has a hollow stalk.

Mister Rye had a pre-launch earlier this year, with a ReadyFundGo crowd-funding campaign to raise $70,000 to help the company establish.

This month Marion and Alexis will work with three graziers in the Riverland and Murray River region (ranging from 16ha to 810ha) on their first harvest.

Rye thought: Marion Vigot. Picture: Mike Burton

“Normally the farmers would crush the stalk after harvesting the grains,” Marion says.

“We are changing the method a bit, harvesting the stalk a little higher, closer to the head, then getting a reaper, windrower or even using a hand harvest method to cut the stalks at less than one metre.

“We are looking for stalks that have a hollow diameter of between 3.5-5mm, which is similar to paper straws.”

Marion says she believes this year’s harvest will reap about 200,000 stalks a hectare, which will then be cleaned, sterilised and packaged on-farm.

“We are wanting to reduce our carbon footprint and by processing on farm it will create local employment,” she says.

“We also want to work collaboratively with farmers. They are not investing money, but for them it is a value-add product and so we want them to be involved as much as possible.”

Marion says once harvested and processed Mister Rye will have a formal product launch next month.

Straws can be pre-ordered online now through the website, in packets of 100 or 1000, with 50 also a future possibility. Marion hopes to produce a million straws next year.

Straws are in two sizes — 20cm for all drinks or cocktail 13cm — and are valued at between 6c to 15c each “because we want to be competitive”.

“We are still more expensive than paper, but this will be the first straw to be made in Australia,” Marion says.

“Through all our research we haven’t been able to find any company in Australia that makes straws. They are all imported from Asia, where they have cheap labour and so can make a cheap product.”

Straws have a minimum shelf life of 24 months, but if cared for can last a lifetime, and are even dishwasher safe.

Marion says they would like to expand the business around Australia, to any farmers growing rye organically, to make the product as local as possible.

And while they won’t be exporting straws, to ensure a low carbon footprint, ultimately they could export the concept overseas.

The South Australian Government earlier this year committed to become the first state to ban plastic straws, next year, with more bans to follow.

Marion, who is working on an entrepreneur visa, says she wasn’t a greenie before starting Mister Rye, but has quickly come to learn about the impact of plastics on the planet.