Enviro & Co aims to bring awareness to environmental issues such as climate change, plastic pollution and endangered species as well as providing tips and suggestions for people wanting to live a more sustainable lifestyle. You can find more information on our educational page @enviro.and.co.education.
With sustainable living, we have also created a range of natural, single-use plastic-free, DIY kits that can be seen on @enviro.and.co.home or our website www.enviroandco.com (launching super soon!). Our kits are aimed at people who enjoy DIY, are environmentally conscious and want to embrace a more natural, environmentally friendly, and plastic free lifestyle. All of our home and body kits were developed using ingredients and recipes that we use in our own homes. When we first started making, our own 'green and clean' products at home we had heard that it was much cheaper than buying commercially made products and you can see exactly what is going into what you are making, BUT each product uses such a small amount of each ingredient, that it is almost impossible to buy the exact amount you need each time, which meant that we always had excess lying around the house, which often 'went off'. We started thinking "hmmm wouldn't it be great if i didn't have to buy such huge amounts every time, I could get EVERYTHING I needed in one go, and there was no single use plastic in sight". One thing led to another and now we have Enviro&Co to solve all these pesky problems!
What made you change over to compostable material for your product?
When we were designing our products we wanted to make them completely plastic free as we know how harmful plastic is to the environment. We absolutely love composting at home, it is a great way to reduce household waste and improve the soil in our ever growing garden. The best option for us to package our ingredients for the products was to opt for a compostable bag. We really wanted bags that could be composted at home to make it easier for customers to dispose of the packaging correctly, making it less likely to get sent to landfill. We also have aimed to support Australian companies for all our packaging and ingredients. During our search for compostable bags we came across Compost Me which was both Australian based and provided a range of home compostable bags and pouches, AND happened to have an office less than an hour from where we lived, we were stoked!
What made Compost Me’s product the right film for your company?
We really needed a leak-proof film to hold our ingredients that include oils, soaps and dry powders. We had heard that oils may speed up the break-down process of some compostable films, this was a major issue that we were concerned about affecting the shelf life of our products. We grabbed some samples from the guys and gals at Compost Me and tested all the ingredients for our products, and for at least a month they held up with no leakage. The compostable bags are an integral part of our products so we are extremely happy with the product that Compost Me produces.
Have you noticed any difference between packaging with compostable films over plastic films?
We decided to start straight away with compostable packaging and skip plastic all together. Compostable packaging has so many more benefits over plastic packaging, from its plant-based source to its environmentally-friendly decomposition. We are aiming to have minimal waste in our packaging process, recycling and reusing what we can. We need to package a range of different volumes of ingredients in the compostable bags so using the smaller offcuts we seal up the edges to make another bag instead of wasting each piece. Even though those offcuts would go into the compost it is best for our business, and the environment to use every last thing we can and make sure nothing goes to waste.