Zero waste week

Founded in 2008, the Zero Waste Week’s purpose is to help organisations, individuals and community to reduce landfill waste, save money and preserve resources. This special week will encourage you to make small changes that lead to more sustainable consumption patterns.

But it’s not only the team behind the Zero Waste Week trying to get more sustainable. Recently, Sky’s Ocean Ventures Fund invested in 10 UK businesses that are looking to make sure plastic isn’t part of our life anymore. The 10 companies have all been chosen because of their pioneering ideas in either material innovation, circular economy or responsible consumption. Here are a few examples.

Bagboard

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It’s Plastic Free July ♻️ For every person who likes this post, we’ll make sure the equivalent of one plastic bag is removed from our oceans. For every follow and repost we’ll get another five plastic bags down to the recycling factory. So click on the paper plane next to the comments button and tap *add to story* to repost. All thanks to our partnership with a wonderful social enterprise called @plasticbank who’ve managed to turn ocean plastic into currency. Which in turn helps communities in developing countries reduce poverty. At Bagboard, our first goal is to recycle the equivalent of one billion plastic bags from our oceans. So every like and follow is a vital step towards that milestone. But with such a big target, we’re keen to spread our message far and wide. So please share this post with friends, family, colleagues, neighbours, passersby and anyone else you can think of. If you’ve not heard of us before, we started Bagboard in 2016 with a mission of replacing single-use plastic bags in shops across London with our eco-friendly paper bags. And because businesses pay to have ads on them, we’re able to give them away to shops for free. Which means that they can give them to their customers for free too. So everyone’s a winner. If you’d like to find out even more, please click the link in our bio. Or take a look at our pinned stories. But before you do, please remember to share this post. And together, let’s get to a world with a billion fewer plastic bags. #InternationalPlasticBagFreeDay #Bagboard #Bagbillion #plasticfreejuly #goplasticfree #singleuseisnotourbag

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Are you fed up of having to buy 5p bags every time you forget your carrier bag? Bagboard have a great solution, turning recycled paper bags into an ad. It’s basically an ad platform bringing people, brands and retailers together to remove and recycle 1 billion plastic bags from the environment.

This is pretty simple; all you need to do is go to one of the 2,000 independent shops across London and grab a paper bag. Then you download the Bagboard app and scan the ad on your bag. As a thank you for doing so, the company will then donate money to Plastic Bank to stop sending plastic into our oceans. You can even return the bag to one of the shops so they can recycle it and create a new bag from it.

Choose Water

Choose Water goal is to be an environmental and social enterprise. They have partnered with Water for Africa with the keen desire to form a long-lasting relationship by raising awareness and providing profit derived financial support. Water for Africa provide lifetime support for all water projects in Africa, through continuous development and training. They believe running water is a basic human right for nations to thrive, and therefore aim to provide each country with the adequate personnel, assistance and technology to succeed.

When a plastic bottle is thrown away – whether it ends up in landfill or our oceans – it will stay there for at least 450 years. Choose Water’s bottles are 100% plastic-free, biodegradable and are made entirely from sustainable naturally derived materials which will take less than a year to degrade. Every bottle is filled with the purest water you can find in the UK and will keep your water super fresh for a very long time.

Flexi Hex

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@maidstonedistillery giving extra care and attention to their bottles, their customers and their environment. 👍🏻

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Flexi Hex is an adaptable plastic-free packaging solution founded by Sam and Will Boex who recognised the impact that single use plastic was having on their local and the world’s marine environment. Their passion for surfing and their personal experience of transporting boards around the globe inspired them to create a sustainable packaging sleeve for the board sports industry.

Motivated by the challenge to create user friendly, well-engineered packaging using simple biodegradable materials, Flexi-Hex is designed as a reliable, adaptable alternative to single use plastics in packaging systems. The unique honeycomb design gives the packaging high compression resistance to unsure that every product will arrive at destination damage free.

Natur Beads

Naturbeads produces biodegradable cellulose microparticles to replace plastic microbeads. But what are microbeads you might want to ask? Fair question, microbeads are added as an exfoliating agent to cosmetics and personal care products, such as soap, facial scrub and toothpastes. When microbeads are washed down the drain, they subsequently pass unfiltered through sewage treatment plants and make their way into rivers and canals, resulting in plastic particle water pollution. Since 2017, countries are banning microbeads in all products, so new companies like Naturbeads are looking for ways to replace them.

Naturbeads are natural and biodegradable made from plants and are much better for the environment. Naturbeads’ biodegradable alternative to plastic microbeads could reduce microplastic pollution in our oceans, so that traces from sun cream, cosmetics and other personal care products don’t end up in the ocean. More to come.

Would you like to know more about our services and how we can help your sustainable business, brand or product? Get in touch today to set up a call with our team.

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