We are thoroughly chuffed to announce that we are officially a Plastic Neutral company!
What this means is that, as a company, we have measured each and every piece of plastic packaging we send out to our customers, plus every little bit of plastic waste we create, right down to what we use in our kitchen (even if it goes into the recycling system). We tallied up all of this plastic and then made a pledge to remove AT LEAST this much plastic from the planet on an ongoing basis.
This is all made possible by an inspirational organisation called rePurpose Global. rePurpose have built a worldwide network of plastic recovery projects and we have partnered with rePurpose to provide funding for their projects, from India to Colombia to Africa to Indonesia.
Listen to why we've become Plastic Neutral
You see, the problem with plastic is not the material itself, but what happens to it when we've finished using it. As a packaging material, it actually has a much smaller environmental footprint than other types of packaging (like tin and glass). It requires less resources to produce, transport, and recycle. If only we could get the recycling part right, it would be awesome. However....
The reality of the recycling industry is that it is SERIOUSLY underfunded. There just isn't enough infrastructure to deal with the waste that the world is creating, and so instead of each country dealing with its own waste, much of that waste from richer Western countries is currently being shipped to poorer Asian countries for them to 'deal with'. This means the plastic waste is at risk of getting incinerated, landfilled, or dumped into oceans - unless we create the infrastructure to help these countries manage the waste in a way that won't be damaging to the environment.
Soft, scrunchable plastics (often referred to as multilayered plastics) are one of the worst offenders because - unlike some other plastic types - there's no financial upside to recycling them. Hard plastics can be recycled and there's opportunities to make money from them, but soft plastics are just a money-sucker, not a money-maker, so no one is interested in recycling them.
Soft plastics are also one of the most dangerous types of plastics for marine life because they break down into microplastics and float on top of the ocean rather than sinking to the bottom.
A whopping $30 Billion+ is needed every year to end plastic leakage into nature, so working with rePurpose to help fund their projects just felt like a no-brainer. We couldn't NOT contribute. As soon as we learned about rePurpose and their projects, we felt an urgent need to start offsetting our plastics and to become Plastic Neutral.
To start with we've chosen to fund a project in Goa (India) which is focused on recycling multilayered (i.e. soft, scrunchable!) plastic that would otherwise have ended up in marine ecosystems. So when you purchase any item from us, we will remove the equivalent amount of plastic as 2 of those items, meaning that our net impact on the planet is a positive one.
As a small company our impact won't be huge, but every little bit counts, and as more companies get on board we hope this will create a groundswell and maybe even one day the recycling industry will get all the funding it needs to ensure our environment is cared for generations to come.
Thank you so much for your support!!!
Image credit: Abdul Raheem Mohamed / EyeEm / Getty Images
