ENVIRONMENT
Closing the loop with compostable packaging By Caroline Spencer
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I started to research alternative products that are earth friendly and found products made from plants, from regular crops such as corn and sugar cane that are renewable and low-carbon. I collected samples from across the world ‘Every Saturday he would buy at auctions, fix things and re-sell them,’ she said. ‘Making something out of a waste product was enough to keep our family safe and healthy and to send us to school. And he used to collect waste from mushroom farms and make it into compost. I didn’t know what it was called then but I now know it as ‘closing the loop.
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e may have all got behind the cause to reuse plastic bags in the supermarket but Karen Gray wants us to go further. She wants to replace all bags, takeaway containers and cutlery with compostable alternatives. Karen’s inspiration goes back to childhood. Growing up in Durban in South Africa, she saw how her father, disabled by polio as a child, could make money from waste.
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Unlike the traditional linear economic model of ‘take-make-consumer-throw away’, a circular ‘closed loop’ economy is where products get collected, repurposed and re-used. A compostable closed loop would see compostable bags and containers combined with food waste and other green waste being made into compost, put back onto the soil, adding nutrients to grow more crops.
More recently, Karen was becoming increasingly aware of the world’s problem with plastic pollution and was moved to take action after watching Blue Planet. ‘I started to research alternative products that are earth friendly and found products made from plants, from regular crops such as corn and sugar cane that are renewable and lowcarbon. I collected samples from across the world,’ she said. In 2018 Karen founded Green on Purpose, a company established to market eco-friendly plant-based products and she became a distributor for a UK company called Vegware. She has since sourced packaging made from mushrooms, algae, cassava, sugar cane and bamboo. One success has been with Café Connect at Highlands College, where the students’ canteen has moved over to plant-based packaging, replacing 270,000 single-use plastic takeaway containers over 12 months. Head chef Patrick Hogge said he had taken action because he wants to do his bit for the planet for the next generation. ‘When I’m not at work or with my family, I am out foraging and seeing what I can get off the land. I have three daughters, the youngest of whom is seven weeks, and I’d like something to be left for them.’ The trouble, however, is that none of the packaging waste from the canteen is actually being composted. ‘It needs to be on a larger scale to achieve,’ he said. ‘We need all cafés to do the same.’
