To celebrate the launch of our new rubbish bags, we had a chat with our Director of Sustainability, Bernie Wiley, about whether or not these bags are actually better for the environment. Spoiler alert – they are. They’re not perfect, but sometimes not perfect is exactly what the planet needs. Like with all of our products, we aim to create the most sustainable products without compromising on quality or effectiveness.

It's not very often we launch a whole new product line, so why did we choose garbage bags?

Our customers asked for it! We conducted a survey on what products they’d like to see be made more sustainably and garbage bags came out as number one. That means making these bags is not only better for the environment but it helps us make a great impact with our annual donations. 

There’s a lot of thought that goes into making our products and a lot of that thinking comes from you. What sort of things do you consider?

Everything! How a product is made, where it's made, what it's made from and how it’s distributed. Really, whenever I'm thinking about a product or sustainability within the business, it's really a holistic view. What are the environmental implications of a product? What are the trade offs for making it more sustainably? 

Our new bags are made of recycled plastic and we’ve been making loo rolls from recycled paper for ages. It begs the question – why are we so obsessed with recycling?

Well, it's just such a great way to make products without creating too much waste. Reuse is always a more ideal solution. But if you can't reuse, then one of the next best things is to recycle. It’s always better to make something useful again rather than just getting rid of it.  

So would you say our garbage bags are the most sustainable way to get rid of trash?

They’re a very sustainable way to get rid of trash, but the best thing to do is to have less trash in the first place.

There are times when we are not able to recycle or reuse things, and they do become trash. When it happens, if you're going to use a plastic garbage bag to get rid of it, which is the case for most people, then using a recycled version is a more sustainable option.

And like you said, it's very much in line with our toilet paper. We're taking something that would be waste and converting it into a useful product to be used another time before it makes it to the end of its lifecycle.

I think there are going to be some people who really want to know why these bags aren't biodegradable.

We actually don't want things to break down in landfill because it releases methane.  Bioplastic (aka plastic that comes from biological substances rather than petroleum) will break down and become methane. If you take recycled plastic like we're using, it's just going to sit in that landfill for who knows how long, but it's not going to break down and release methane like a degradable plastic would. Again, it’s better to create less garbage, but if you’re going to send waste to landfill, you want to keep it in something that will not degrade and release a powerful greenhouse gas in the process. 

Still, plastic makes people uneasy. Especially microplastics. 

I get it! But the thing is, plastic is a super useful material for us in all kinds of things we do in our life. Single use plastic is really the big problem. The reduction of any single use plastic is always good. As far as microplastics go, that's also a big problem. Usually microplastics evolve when  plastic breaks down in a waterway, or on land into smaller and smaller pieces and then ends up in waterways and eventually oceans.

What we're doing is taking plastic that could potentially end up as microplastics and recycling it into new products that are almost certainly going to end up in a landfill. Where it won't break down into microplastics and end up in waterways.

Ok, but if we're using plastic that other businesses aren't using, in some way aren't we encouraging other people to make more plastics that we could recycle?

That's a really good question. The reality is that plastic is going to be made regardless of what we’re doing. Are we creating more of a demand for plastic? No, we're reducing the amount of single use plastic going directly to landfill. And helping create a value for an otherwise single use, disposable product. But this isn’t the end. We’ll continue to find new ways to address waste by iterating on these products as well as introducing new, improved materials and products to our range.

So much thinking!

Absolutely. We're trying to make a product that's suitable for use in our current waste disposal systems. We're not able to change the way waste is handled and disposed of in our society right now. That's a much, much bigger issue. What we're trying to do is find the most sustainable way to fit into those waste disposal systems that we have.

That makes sense. Now let's talk about the actual quality of these bags, because a garbage bag is not something that you want to not work.

Correct. And these absolutely work.  We've gone for quite a heavy gauge or thickness of bag used to ensure they have the strength qualities our customers would expect from their standard rubbish bags.

Wow, thanks Bernie! Anything else you want to say about these bags? 

Just that they look great! So much better than the boring bags on the shelf in your local retail store!

Is that your official Director of Sustainability analysis? 

Absolutely. 


Want to try our pet waste and rubbish bags for yourself? Yay! Give ‘em a go here.