May 29, 2020
Made in China. It’s a phrase many of us are used to hearing or seeing, but one that we didn’t pay much attention to until this coronavirus pandemic. And let’s be clear here: it has absolutely nothing to do with China’s position in this entire pandemic. The US workforce is experiencing one of the hardest times it ever has. With unemployment spikes rising to over 20% in the past weeks, the reason Made in America products have become so popular is to support and create jobs for the American people. At UrthPact, we are proud to be a part of that movement. We’ve always believed in the American workforce, and that they produce higher-quality and more health-conscious products than do their overseas counterparts. And we thread that message through the entirety of our company.
This week we celebrated Memorial Day. We honored the American men and women who lost their lives defending our country. We spent time with family (over social distance and video chat), and considered what the reopening of the country means for each and every one of us. As the single-use disposables industry continues to see increases in demand, we are working tirelessly to solve every problem, and to provide our customers with a 100% American-made, contaminant-free and food-safe product. And we keep moving forward, even if coronavirus has done everything in its power to hold us back. We are ramping up production of our home compostable straws and will be stocking our customer’s inventories in early June. Our coffee customers are experiencing higher demand than ever before. Our cutlery lines are preparing for an absolutely incredible new demand source. And everyone is keeping the planet in mind as they choose their disposables. If we’re going to use more disposables, why not choose ones that are healthy for the planet as well as for your customers?
To give you an idea of how many American workers you support when you choose UrthPact products, consider a single, wrapped, home compostable straw. Now, that straw started out as a canola plant that was sourced from American farmers. It’s then made into a home compostable, marine-degradable bioplastic resin by our American-based suppliers. That resin comes to UrthPact, where it is extruded into a straw. That process requires engineers and technicians to run the machines, operators to ensure a smooth flow through the production line, a quality team to inspect the product, and packagers and shippers to send it out. It then goes to a distributor or private-label brand, where that straw supports jobs in their sales and shipping departments again. And finally, it goes to the end-user, where it helps support take-out establishments, restaurants, and a variety of other single-use industries. Just one straw can provide jobs to a huge range of individuals in a variety of different industries.
Jobs are one of the most important things in America right now. We take great pride in being able to provide good jobs for our 100% American-based workforce. Our support of American workers, suppliers, partners, and their customers allows everyone to win. That’s part of our core mission here at UrthPact. Everyone deserves to win: us, our private label and brand customers, our distributor partners, their customers, our material suppliers, and our planet. So as we get back to normal life, we urge all private label brands, foodservice distributors, and all who provide single-use products to your customers, to assess the products you buy. Where are they made? How many Americans did they provide jobs to? Are they supporting people as well as the planet? Choose made in the USA. Choose to support the American people. Choose to protect our planet. Choose UrthPact.
May 22, 2020
After over 60 days in quarantine, all 50 states have officially lifted stay-at-home orders. That’s right, our time cooped up indoors has finally come to an end. But as we begin to prepare to return to our normal, pre-corona, everyday lives, there’s a couple of things to take into account. And that’s what we’ve addressed this past week. As we get ready to dive headfirst into normal life, it’s time to restock and plan for the post-covid future that we’re facing. And in that process, it’s important to consider where your products are coming from, and the conditions they’re being manufactured in. We all want to take extra precautions to stay healthy when we leave the house, so what can you do to provide your customers with food-safe, contaminant-free, and high-quality products?
First and foremost: choose an American-made product, and specify that to your customers! America is ranked 4th on the Global Food Security Index for safety and quality of the products they produce. China on the other hand ranks 38th, and India even lower at 84th. Clearly, products made in the USA are of a much higher quality than those made overseas, and are more likely to come from a food-safe facility. The manufacturing industry in China and India–while having improved food-safety and cleanliness standards in the past 10 years–is so large and widespread that it is nearly impossible to enforce strong regulations. So even though there has been new legislation tightening the reins on the food and food packaging industries overseas, they are not nearly as well enforced as they are stateside.
Second: choose a product that is being manufactured in a Safe Quality Food (SQF) certified facility. As the coronavirus pandemic slowly comes to an end here in the US, food-safe and contaminant-free products are more important now than ever. Restaurants are even using wrapped, single-use cutlery in place of reusable metal cutlery to help keep customers safe as they slowly begin to reopen. But is wrapped cutlery really more sterile? Do you know where it came from, how it was manufactured, what standards it had to pass? An SQF certified facility guarantees products not only of the highest quality, but that are food-safe and contaminant-free. And in a post-covid world, that’s the most important thing you can provide for your customers: peace of mind and confidence in the products they use.
We’ve made it through one of the most tumultuous times in recent history. And we’ve learned so much because of it. Some of us want life to go back to exactly the way it was before corona, some think the world has been changed forever, and some fall in the middle of the spectrum. Reality is, we cannot stay cooped up in our homes forever, and we need the country to start getting back to some semblance of normal. Disposable products are an intricate part of that process. Take-out is still necessary, masks are still needed, and we need ways to protect consumers as they venture back out into the world. Disposables provide that. But where your disposables come from and how they’re made matters. So choose American-made to support the American workforce and guarantee the best quality. And choose SQF-certified to ensure food-safety and contaminant-free. And as a bonus? Choose compostable. As the single-use disposables industry surges, don’t let it be at the cost of the health of our planet. This is our chance to make a change for a planet and our country. Let’s take it.
May 15, 2020
Eco-friendly! Sea-turtle approved! Bio-based! Every week there’s a new product on the market claiming to be better for the planet than the version that came before it. And sometimes it is! We are constantly learning more about materials and methods that allow us to create products that are safer and healthier for us as a species, as well as for our planet. But in that process, we uncovered a catch-22. Most consumers are willing to pay more for a sustainable product. Therefore, if your product truly is sustainable, you can charge more AND still have the same sales volumes as your competitors. But this fact has led to the stretching of the truth in order to make a profit. Greenwashing is claiming a product provides more environmental benefits than it actually does or making an environmental claim without the science to back it up.
Greenwashing began to rear its ugly head in the 1980’s, with a wide range of companies claiming to make “greener” choices for the positive publicity, while actively doing the opposite. These deceiving practices cost these companies huge sums, as well as led to the development of a variety of regulations on green marketing. Today, the line between green marketing and greenwashing is constantly blurred. How is calling something “eco-friendly” different from calling it “biodegradable?” What’s the difference between “biodegradable” and “compostable?” Understanding these terms and the ways in which they are used can help you make the right choices when choosing products to provide to your customers.
Let’s start with biodegradable and compostable. These two terms are often used interchangeably. But the truth is, they aren’t synonyms and carry very different meanings. Yes, both refer to products and materials that can be broken down by living organisms to return to nature. The key difference is the products. The product of compostable breakdown is, well, compost. And the key characteristic of compost is that it provides nutrients to the ecosystem to support growth and development. The products of biodegradation are natural elements that return innocuously to the Earth, and provide no further benefits to the ecosystem. In a similar analogy to all squares are rectangles but not all rectangles are squares, all compostables are biodegradable, but not all biodegradables are compostable.
Greenwashing has given truly environmentally-friendly products a bad rap. There are beneficial compostables and biodegradables out there, but they’re so restricted by greenwashing regulations, it can be hard to tell them apart from their less-than-truthful competitors. Here are a few ways to avoid getting caught up in greenwashing:
- Avoid very generic phrases like “eco-friendly.” Their generic nature means the provided environmental benefit may be very minuscule or nonexistent.
- Look for valid, 3rd-party-certification stamps and logos. Some of the most common are BPI (Biodegradable Products Institute), TUV Austria’s OK compost and OK biodegradable, ASTM standards and CMA (Compost Manufacturing Alliance).
- State the facts. If your product has been certified compostable or biodegradable, get as much information in front of the consumer as possible. The more facts a consumer has, the more valid your claim becomes.
While greenwashing isn’t going away anytime soon, we’re thankful for those out there that are doing green marketing right and providing customers with honest certifications and information. You are the model that everyone should be following. Regulations are in place for a reason, and they are a good thing, meant to protect consumers from misleading claims. The more we educate on compostables, biodegradables, and the pitfalls of greenwashing, the more successful we will be in our continued missions to protect the planet.
May 8, 2020
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. The 3 R’s. Basically the everyday American’s system for living a “greener” lifestyle. But are the 3 R’s really working to solve the plastic crisis that’s sweeping our planet? Reduce and reuse definitely — they eliminate single-use plastics at the source, decrease demand, and allow us to produce fewer single-use plastic products that will inevitably end up in oceans and landfills. But is recycling the solution on the back end? Is it really helping to eliminate plastic waste in our oceans and landfills? We’ve treated recycling like a cure-all for the plastic disease taking over our planet when in reality, the system is struggling, and barely catches a small fraction of the total plastic waste produced and disposed of yearly.
Let us break it down for you. When plastic gets recycled, it very rarely is truly recycled into a product of the same quality as it was previously. Most often, things are downcycled into a product of lesser quality. Most plastics can only handle one extra life cycle through this process. They then are no longer suitable to be recycled and are disposed of in a landfill or incinerator. So, while we get a little bit more time out of that material, we still reach the same end result. The recycling system is also much more complex than most people think. There are 7 different types of plastics, all of which must be sorted from each other during the recycling process. And most small objects, like straws and bottle caps, quite literally slip through the cracks and are too small to be recycled. Materials also have to be cleaned in order to be recycled, so anything with food remains on it is often sorted out for landfill disposal.
In 2017, the US produced over 35 million tons of plastic waste. Of that plastic waste, only about 3 million tons were recycled, and about 5.5 million tons were combusted with energy recovery. The other 26.5 million tons were landfilled. Clearly, we’re doing something wrong. So what’s the solution? If we can’t rely on recycling to make a better end-of-life for single-use plastic products, what can we do? The first thing is to realize that single-use packaging isn’t the problem. The problem here is that we chose to make products meant to be used for 5 minutes from a material meant to last for hundreds of years. The true solution to the plastic epidemic is changing the material: bringing on the bioplastic future.
Compostable bioplastics solve the issue of our overflowing landfills and polluted oceans. PLA (polylactic acids)-based compounds will break down in commercial compost settings in under 3 months. Materials in the PHA (polyhydroxyalkanoates) family will break down in home compost in under a year, as well as in landfills and marine environments if it accidentally ends up there. Between these two materials, we have the ability to completely change the face of the single-use industry. Not only do compostables have a better end-of-life than petroleum-based plastics, but they have a better beginning-of-life too. There are no toxic chemicals involved, no usage of “old carbon.” And their life cycles are completely circular, as the compost created at the end of their lives can be used to support the growth of the sugar cane, canola plants, or starches they are made from.
The 3 R’s were a great place to start. But it’s now time to adjust our thinking for the ever-changing society we live in and the planet we live on. Recycling can’t do it alone. The system is too complex and selective to actually make a dent in the amount of plastic waste we produce yearly. By beginning the transition to bioplastics, we will be making a greater impact on the planet than we can imagine. Mother Nature is depending on us, and it’s time we stepped up and did something about it.
May 1, 2020
Last week’s 50th Anniversary celebration of Earth Day could not have come at a better time. As we continue to see changes in our planet as a result of the self-quarantine of human beings, it’s important to look to the post-COVID future. We don’t want to undo all of the work Mother Nature did while we were away. We need to take this opportunity and run with it and continue to make changes that will support our planet and our society as well. One of the largest problems to tackle is single-use plastics. They’ve created a noose around the neck of our planet, which hasn’t loosened at all during the quarantine. It has simply changed from a noose of plastic bottles to a noose of rubber gloves. This week, UrthPact is diving into the revolutionary solution to our single-use problem: home compostable bioplastics.
Home compostable truly is the future of the plastics industry. The base of home compostable bioplastics is a material called PHA, or polyhydroxyalkanoate. It’s a type of compostable polymer that is naturally produced by a variety of microorganisms. Made from the products of canola oil production, PHA can be combined with other compostable materials to produce products with a wide range of characteristics. One incredible organization that has truly jump-started the bioplastic revolution is Danimer Scientific. Based out of Bainbridge, Georgia, Danimer combines biotechnology and engineering to produce PHA for use in a variety of different projects. As a long-time partner with Danimer, UrthPact has been working alongside Danimer scientists to develop the Nodax™ PHA resin, as well as to put it to use in our products.
Let’s look into the details a bit. What truly makes home compostable materials revolutionary? The clearest answer is the fact that they are certified for home compost. Home compostables are different from all of the other “compostable” products out there. Many of those are industrially compostable, meaning they are made with a different bioplastic called PLA (polylactic acids), and require added heat and microbes in order to compost. Home compost is a whole new opportunity, as it means that this material and products made from it can compost not only in your own backyard but anaerobically in landfills and in marine environments if they accidentally get there. The compost produced can then be used to support the growth of new canola plants. This gives home compostables a completely circular lifecycle, something that will never be able to be said of traditional petroleum-based plastics. Because it’s about the beginning of the material’s life too. Creating products with petroleum-plastics is very unhealthy for the environment, while PHA production is completely clean and green.
A lot of people want to ban single-use plastics outright. But realistically, that will never work. How could we have combated coronavirus without single-use gloves? Or masks? Or food packaging? Bans are short-sighted. Home compost is the true solution for the single-use industry. And with a revolutionary base material like PHA plus the technology to use it to create home compostable products on an industrial scale, we are just on the cusp of completely blowing apart the mold. At UrthPact, our partnership with organizations like Danimer Scientific gives us the opportunity to be at the forefront of this revolution. Our home compostable straws are just the first step towards the bioplastic future. We’ve joined in the revolution. Will you?
