In South Africa, Catherine Morris has founded the country’s first compostable food packaging company.
Green Home produces packaging for takeaway food, replacing single-use plastic waste. The company uses materials such as sugarcane waste, wood fiber, wood cellulose, bamboo, and plant-based starch as feedstocks.
“I want to see plant-based food packaging become the norm,” Morris tells Bizcommunity. “I’d say we’ve done well in educating people about the concept and the need to move away from single-use plastics. The idea of it being the norm is approaching faster than we thought, with big chain stores making various claims to reduce the amount of plastic in their offering. Green Home currently supplies nationally and internationally and has 30 permanent employees.”
Creativity and price are the main barriers to more widespread adoption of plant-based packaging. “There are many creative ways to avoid plastic food packaging,” Morris adds. “However, people become used to doing things in a certain way and if there is no push or pull to do something differently then they’ll continue doing things that way—despite the environmental impact of it.”