We all know that reducing our single-use plastics consumption is important, and we want to do our best to reduce the impact that our packages have on the planet. Which is why we’re switching our packaging over.

Now, I want to note that not everything in our packaging is eco-friendly right now. We already have some packaging that is plastic based, and the most eco-friendly thing to do is use everything that we already have, and then replace it with eco-friendly alternatives when it runs out. If you want your packaging to be 100% plastic free in your order then please leave a comment on your order and I’ll do my best to accommodate you!

One of the biggest changes to our packaging is switching our plastic bags, that we used to package kits, sliders & rings and various bits & bobs in orders. We are now moving to glassine bags, which are recyclable, biodegradable, and compostable.

I get my bags from Uline in Canada, and they are the same price as common sized re-closable plastic bags, they come in a variety of sizes (and they have gusseted ones for really luscious bra & swim kits!). They are 100% paper that is made translucent and grease-resistant through a process called ‘supercalendaring’ that crushes the fibres of the paper. You generally see them for selling baked goods & pharmacy prescriptions.

Before and after 

 

To make everything look more branded and to help with the labelling – especially for underwires – we invested in some affordable custom stamps.

Before we used to write the size and style of our underwires with a sharpie on the plastic bags, and now we made custom stamps for each type of wire, so we can stamp them with a style of wire and then fill in the size- which I think looks better than before! We have our custom stamps made at Mason Row And we loved them so much that we had them designed for each of our patterns and our logo too!

Which brings me to another change- which is our stickers. Before we had custom designed stickers to label bags and add our branding. But they weren’t as eco-friendly as they could be. So now we get these compostable sugarcane-paper stickers from Pure Labels that we stamp with our pattern stamps (to show which kit is which) and we also use the small circular stickers to close small glassine bags with product in them

Otherwise we’ve switched our regular postcards (that we include in every package) with the recycled paper option from Vistaprint – which are super luxe looking! And we are looking at sourcing new boxes and tissue that are made from recycled materials.

The final piece of the puzzle are our courier bags, and our bubble mailers. We found a company called Ecoenclose for our new courier bags, which are made from 100% recycled plastics (50% of which is post-consumer plastic!). And they are recycleable and reusable (with a second sticky strip so you can re-seal the bag again!). And instead of bubble mailers (which we use to send underwires) we found a nice and sturdy alternative from SupremeX with their 100%recycled material Heavy Mailers

If you have a small company too, please feel free to take any of these ideas for your business, and to share what you’re doing to make your packaging more eco-friendly. It can be difficult to find affordable eco-alternatives and we all need to work together and share our ideas and solutions to help make change.

If you can change even one small thing about your packaging or the way you run your business to be more eco-friendly it all helps. It is not about a few people being perfectly eco-friendly, but about everyone being imperfectly eco-friendly :)  That is how to make good change for the future

xo

erin