You look at the ingredients on your food packaging, you buy hemp clothing, and you become eco-conscious and aware. You’re on the bandwagon. Championing recycling and upcycling and a life of non-wastage! Then, when you buy your farm vegetables and organic chicken, it gets packaged in a plastic bag, for your convenience.
What’s the point? What is the point of buying into sustainable living on any sort of level, and not following it through?
It’s not you, the consumer, that’s always at fault. For example, big businesses around the world do not focus on packaging when bagging or posting products. Order something from an online store, from a children’s book to organic coffee, and it will come triple wrapped in bubble wrap and plastic, in cardboard that is wrapped securely in plastic tape. It’s difficult to acquire a sense of our role in renewables and the environment when these one-use throwaways are handed to us at every step of the consumer cycle.
At Sealand we have adopted an holistic approach to our upcycling process. This approach is intrinsic to our packaging.
Firstly, we believe that overkill packaging is unnecessary and far from sustainable. The less packaging the better!
Secondly, in our packaging we only use upcycled or recycled material. You will never find us using plastic to get products in a fit state to wherever they need to go, even overseas (France bans plastic bag, cups and plates).
Plastic packaging and bagging remains the most common form of product packaging, and this one-use packaging is the type that finds its way into our oceans. Our oceans are at risk and we, as its’ custodians, need to step up.
With a purchase at Sealand, our retail customers get a simple upcycled cylindrical bag, made from old billboards. This bag can be reused as a carry bag.
The swing tags that we use on our products, for example, are also made from recycled paper, and the string that we use to tie the swing tags with is hand-cut from old billboard mesh.
When we ship overseas, our products are packaged in recyclable cardboard boxes. Simple, clean, and no unnecessary packaging!
How many companies out there just wrap up everything they retail, or distribute, in layers of plastic with scant regard for the repercussions? And some even have the nerve to claim to be eco-conscious!? Isn’t their bid for short-term gain getting in the way of their long-term sustainability? If we don’t start making intelligent and careful decisions on a daily basis our oceans and our world will become over run with plastic and trash, and wealth will become irrelevant.
