Imagine packaging on your snack bar that doesn’t have to go in your rubbish bin.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
You can bury it deep into the ground on your hike or mountain bike ride, or add it to your composting at home, confident it will naturally break down and return nutrients to the soil.
It’s called home compostable packaging and is made from renewable sources like plant fibers.
Ballarat small business owner Ellen Burns is making the move to use the new environmentally friendly packaging for her health food bars.
“At the moment there are only a handful of businesses in Australia that have home compostable packaging.
“As we have seen recently we can’t really depend on our recycling bin... With home compostable, we are trying to keep it out of the waste stream completely.”
Those without home composting systems can add the packaging to composting at community gardens like Food is Free Laneway.
Ms Burns has always had a passion for the environment, and says ethical decisions have been important to her business since its beginning in 2015.
As we have seen recently we can’t really depend on our recycling bin.
- Ellen Burns
Until now she has been hand making We Bar None health bars and crackers in her mother’s Brown Hill kitchen, but a move to upscale and outsource manufacturing to a bigger Ballarat family business will allow her to move away from current recyclable packaging.
Ms Burns said Ballarat was improving its environmental conscience.
“Healthy Hub are plastic free, and their containers are plant based biodegradable. That just shows that reducing waste is possible. People have shown they don’t want trash anymore.”
Australians throw away around 1.9 million tonnes of packaging each year – enough to fill the Melbourne Cricket Ground nine times over, according to Sustainability Victoria.
Ms Burns is running a Pozible pledge campaign to bar plastic from We Bar None where supporters can pledge funds now to kickstart the move to home compostable packaging, and receive products after set up.
Visit pozible.com/project/we-bar-none-bars-plastic for more information.