Jul 14, 2022
What is it about summer that makes want to make even more sustainable choices than the rest of the year? Could it be that we spend more time outdoors during the summer at the beach, hiking in the wilderness, or spending time with family and friends? Is it that we associate summer with our oceans and sustainable seas are one of the most important areas of sustainability? Or could it be that humans are continuing to dump millions of tons of plastic waste into the ocean? If you agreed with any of the above, you’d be right! During the summer time, people have a tendency to spend more time outside, making them more aware of their natural world and their own effects on it. And for those of us who don’t mind sand in our toes and salt in our hair, a lot of that time is spent at the beach, where we can often see marine plastic pollution first hand. And it’s currently estimated that up to 200 million tons of plastic waste is already in our oceans; a number that continues to rise as plastic waste production reaches all time highs. We bring you the Summer of Sustainability to encourage you to make sustainable choices this summer, and give you some tips to be greener and bluer!
One of the easiest ways to be more sustainable while adventuring this summer is to try and use all reusable products and containers on your trips! Water bottles, reusable plastic containers, and metal straws are all easy products to carry along with you to store all of your snacks and beverages, and they help to reduce the amount of single-use plastic waste we put into our waste system. If you do have to use a single-use plastic – like a plastic water bottle or a chip bag – be sure to dispose of it in the right place! If you’re at the beach, bring a trash bag for all of your disposables, and carry them home. If you use a plastic bottle on a hike, put it back in your bag to recycle it at the bottom of the trail or at home. By ensuring we dispose of our trash in the right places, we greatly reduce the chance of it ending up as litter somewhere, whether that’s the land or the sea.
Another tactic if you need to use disposables this summer is try and find more sustainable disposables than traditional, petroleum-based plastic ones. Plastic straws and cutlery have lifetimes of hundreds to thousands of years, and they only ever break down to tiny microplastics. These microplastics are then ingested by animals that are consumed by humans, absorbed by plants, and even scattered about the world via wind and water. New studies show that humans are consuming 5 grams of plastic a day! Let’s put that in perspective: 5 grams per day is 1,825 grams of plastic per year, or about 4 pounds, or the same weight as your average bottle of ketchup. That’s A LOT of plastic for humans to be consuming! And the same negative effects that plastic waste has on wildlife also applies to humans: toxic leeching, risk for disease, and everything in between. By choosing disposables that are compostable, and overall, more sustainable, you not only protect the planet, but yourself as well.
The Summer of Sustainability is only 3 months out of the year. At UrthPact, we use this time of year to encourage our team and our partners to make more sustainable decisions for our planet. But in reality, only being sustainable in the summer isn’t enough. In order to reverse the damage done to our planet by plastics, we need a full year of everyone making more sustainable choices. No single person can do it alone. So encourage your friends, family, neighbors, and business partners to make more planet-friendly choices, not just this summer, but all year round.
May 5, 2022
Are you looking to make sustainable changes in your business but aren’t sure where to start? Is your city implementing plastic bans that you need to comply with? Are you customers demanding that you make better choices for the planet? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then UrthPact is here to help. Our goal is to help you help the planet, while still providing high quality products to your customers and their end users, while also complying with local plastics ordinances. Our compostable product lines help to provide the experiences your customers expect from their single-use problems without causing any harm to the planet.
Plastic is bad. We all know it, we’ve all heard it, and we’ve all had the 3 R’s jammed into our head for years now: reduce, reuse, recycle. But we think a 4th R is much more important: rethink. Are single-use products really the problem? Or is the problem that we chose to make them out of a material that was originally designed to last hundreds of years? New technology has allowed us to produce the products we know and love from materials that are much more environmentally friendly. At UrthPact, one of our main goals is to help educate the world on compostable bioplastics, and the potential that these materials have for the future of the single-use products industry. When you partner with us to provide compostables to your customers, you don’t just get a manufacturing partner; you also get an educational partner. We’ll provide you with a wealth of knowledge and resources to help explain and communicate to your customers the positive choices you’re making for the planet, and how that directly reflects back to them. Studies show that consumers are actively changing their buying preferences and habits based on the sustainability of a business, and therefore communicating your sustainable choices is a key piece of your success.
On top of providing a wide range of resources for you to utilize with your customers, we also help businesses to build a more sustainable brand image. We’ve been in this field a long time, and our team has lots of experience in creating a seamless brand experience on our products. Because we are 100% customizable, you can communicate your brand’s message through custom packaging, implementation of brand colors, and everything in between. And we’ll be there to advise you the entire way. We believe in a win, win, win, win situation: when your customers win, you win, we win, AND the planet wins. We truly believe in the benefits and quality of products, and we want our partners to be able to take them and make them their own. That’s what sets us apart from the competition and allows us to reach a wider customer base. You’ve already built your brand, now let us help you make it more sustainable.
UrthPact also helps our partners to achieve a variety of sustainability goals. Like we said before: consumers are actively choosing more sustainable businesses to shop from, or to eat at. They’re also willing to spend more money if they know the product or service they are getting in return is sustainable or planet-friendly. Having sustainability goals in place and actively working to achieve them is a great way to make your businesses more planet-friendly in the eyes of consumers. Implementing compostable products reduces waste, lowers overall carbon footprint, and gives back to the environment when they’re disposed of. And, they’ll satisfy your customers’ needs as well. They won’t turn to mush in a smoothie, cause your coffee to be weaker, or snap in half when you try to cut a burger in half. They’ll provide all of the functionality that your customers expect but still push you closer to your sustainability goals than anything made of plastic would.
At UrthPact, we want to see our partners succeed. When our partners win, we win, and the planet wins. We are behind you 100% of the way, whether it’s assisting with sustainability messaging and marketing, providing educational resources, or reaching sustainability goals. Our long-term goal is to keep 25 billion pieces of plastic from reaching oceans and landfills. And we can’t reach that goal without all of our incredible partners, current and future. So to answer the simple question: what can UrthPact do for you? We can help you save the world from plastic.
Jun 24, 2021
Let’s be honest: do any of us really enjoy drinking from a paper straw? Do we like struggling to stay clean while driving with a sippy lid? While we have done a great job perpetuating the idea that we should stop using unnecessary plastics like straws, we haven’t considered human nature in that process: we like convenience. Even the most plastic-phobic people don’t want to have an open cup of Diet Coke in their car while they’re driving. And there is a large portion of society that requires a straw in order to enjoy a beverage. UrthPact is here to bring you the solution to your problems and worries: a single-use straw made from home compostable and marine-degradable materials that feels and functions like plastic but will completely biodegrade, anywhere on Earth, in under a year.
Over the past year, UrthPact has been engineering the processes to use an earth-friendly, biodegradable, and compostable resin for our new straw line. Our goal was to create a straw that provides function without guilt; that could stand up to drinks but break down in compost, or the oceans (should they accidentally get there). And that’s exactly what we did. UrthPact straws are made from a marine-degradable material that will biodegrade in the ocean in just 6 months, and in home compost in under a year. They’ll even break down in landfills, as well as in commercial compost settings as well. No matter where on the planet these straws find themselves at the end of their lives, they will vanish back to the Earth in under a year.
Not only did we take Mother Nature into account with this product, but we focused on our customers too. Our straws are 100% Made in the USA, fully supporting the American workforce through every stage of the manufacturing process. All of UrthPact’s facilities are SQF (Safe Quality Food) certified, and we guarantee the highest quality of our products. The straws are price competitive with other plastic alternatives and are the perfect solution for larger-scale operations where reusable straws are not a feasible option.
A world where consumption leaves no footprint. 25 billion plastic pieces kept from oceans and landfills. These are the goals that drive us every single day. Drive us to continue creating innovative solutions to the plastic pollution problem. To educate consumers on the options that are available to them. Our straws are only the beginning of the solution. The possibilities of home compostable bioplastics can truly revolutionize the single-use products industry.
Learn more about the home compostable revolution HERE.
Click HERE to learn more about UrthPact’s home compostable and marine-degradable straws.
