Palm oil has been used for everything from soaps to cooking oil to biofuel. But the palm fruit husks are generally thrown away as waste. Canadian Earthcycle Packaging aims to change all that by using fiber from palm husks to create sustainable food packaging.

The company pitched its product during last week’s Styrofoam and plastic cartons, and composts in only 90 days. In addition to the carton holding the food, the company creates “NatureFlex Film,” a certified compostable wrap made from wood pulp-derived cellulose, which eliminates the commonplace plastic wrap that is neither recyclable nor compostable.

Although palm oil has many applications, the husks are usually considered to be waste and burned. So the company applies a cradle-to-cradle mentality to the husks and prevents them from incineration by turning them into packaging, which can then be composted.

According to the company’s CEO, Shannon Boase, the palm husks come from a sustainably harvested small plantation in Malaysia that produces much more fiber than Earthcycle can even use. That one plantation produces enough biomass to produce 100 million packages a day.

If only more packaging came from otherwise unused palm husks - if the 9.3 billion units of rigid pre-packed produce sold annually in the United States were packed in Earthcycle, more than 410 million pounds of waste could be diverted from landfill to compost, according to Earthcycle's Web site.