The 2026 FIFA World Cup is set to bring massive global crowds to SoFi Stadium–and mountains of cups, utensils and food containers to match. PlantSwitch, a startup that makes compostable alternatives to traditional plastic food-service products, has convinced the 70,000-seat Los Angeles venue to rethink where all that waste ends up.

“Most consumers and most businesses want to do the right thing,” says PlantSwitch CEO Dillon Baxter. “The issue is how—and they don’t want to switch to something their customers are going to hate, like a paper straw.”

The partnership follows a funding boost. On Friday, PlantSwitch announced it closed $17 million in a Series A round, bringing its total funding to $28 million. The timing is notable, too. Wars, shipping delays and supply-chain disruptions have put the price of plastic at an all-time high.

For PlantSwitch, that’s a golden opportunity. And things such as cutlery, bowls and cups are, undeniably, an everyday commodity. The U.S. alone discards nearly 100 million utensils every single day. “There's not many industries where you have billions and billions of units moving,” Baxter says.

Green utensils aren’t new, nor have they been popular. Awkward wooden forks and spoons have been around for years. And then there’s those soggy paper straws. Non-plastic goods are usually more expensive for the business, and less user friendly for the customer–a lose-lose situation for all but the most fervent eco-crusader. PlantSwitch is out to make products which “feel and function like plastic.” But instead of lingering in landfills for centuries, Baxter says his materials break down naturally within ten weeks.

That’s possible thanks to mother nature. The startup takes existing waste such as rice husks, turns them into further mush and then molds them into things like forks and spoons.

“What I saw was that every alternative to plastic had a trade-off. Whether that was quality with a paper straw; or cost-wise, things may be way too expensive. Then some were greenwashing,” says Baxter, who cofounded the company with fellow Forbes U30 alum Maxime Blandin.

A PlantSwitch fork will still cost more than a plastic one, but it's a price over a hundred clients are willing to pay. The first to sign on was salad producer Taylor Farms, whose packaged salads across Walmart stores nationwide now include PlantSwitch forks labeled “compostable.”

Since then, Elon Musk’s Starlink carries PlantSwitch products at its corporate campuses, Live Nation works with them across the many concerts and events the entertainment company promotes, and SoFi Stadium will be distributing its cutlery during the eight games it’s set to host during the upcoming World Cup.

The ultimate goal is to get their volumes so high that they can bring costs down to compete directly with plastic itself. And from there, move into products beyond just food.

“We tried to focus on the high volume, low margin to start,” the cofounder says. “What that does for us is unlocks all of the other industries in which plastic can be replaced.”