According to a news report from business.inquirer.net, “That Italian fare really comes in round bamboo trays at the Armando’s Pizza here. And this is no recent pizza packaging style.”
“We’ve been happily at it since 1982,” said Marc Nepomuceno, owner of Historic Camalig Restaurant. It sells exclusively the Armando’s Pizza, which is named after Nepomuceno’s father,” said the story. “Rendered a local taste and served in a bilao—igu to Kapampangan—Armando’s Pizza is proudly billed “Ang Pambansang Pizza (The National Pizza). Pizza is traditionally round just as an igu is round, so it makes perfect sense,” he said. Nepomuceno used to pack the pizza in cardboards for a time but adopted the igu “as a result of what was then as it is still now the family’s shared concern for the continuing problem of deforestation.” Family means he and his siblings Olivia, Armanda and Mariel. In using the igu, they pioneered the use of reusable, eco-friendly packaging long before the environmental activists asked businesses to go green. “All that cardboard makes you think about all those trees. And when you get flash floods and landslides like you get your 24/7 pizza delivery, you’d be thinking about the trees,” Nepomuceno said.”
