How one frustrated Danish camper invented a biodegradable grill

After a camping trip left Carsten Nygaard Brøgger frustrated with the poor design of ubiquitous disposable aluminum grills—which not only burn food (and people) easily but can take 200 years to biodegrade—he and his wife, Susanne Nygaard Brøgger, set out to engineer a single-use grill from cardboard and other sustainable materials. “Everyone we talked to said, ‘You’re crazy, that’s not possible,’ ” says Brøgger. But in July 2017, after years of prototyping at their kitchen table, they unveiled the CasusGrill, an $15 single-use device that runs on bamboo charcoal briquettes. The grill’s cardboard body is insulated from the fire by a lining of lava stone, the only element that isn’t biodegradable (instead, it can be used in gardens). The grill, small enough to fit in most backpacks, won a Danish Design Award. Now sold at 1,500 U.S. retailers, including Amazon and Ace Hardware, CasusGrill has secured licensing rights in 49 different countries. Brøgger sees the grill’s success as a blueprint. By making familiar items greener, he says, “you don’t have to persuade people to use a product they’ve never seen or change their way of living.”