Ecostore Urges Businesses To Consider Better Packaging Options During Recycling Week

Auckland, New Zealand, Tuesday 17th October 2023: For 30 years, ecostore, New Zealand's leading brand in sustainability, has been creating high-quality and sustainable home, body, and baby care products. Since its inception, ecostore has also been dedicated to creating more sustainable ways of doing business.

Yesterday marked the start of Recycling Week (16th – 22nd October) and ecostore is challenging Kiwi businesses to make mindful packaging decisions and take responsibility for the waste they are creating.

“We, as the business community, have the ultimate responsibility in what we’re packaging our products in. Companies can’t continue to pump out endless plastic and expect their customers to deal with it,” says ecostore CEO Pablo Kraus.

Globally, plastic consumption has quadrupled over the past 30 years. Only 9% of plastic waste is recycled. The bulk of plastic waste is ending up in landfill, incinerated or leaking into the environment.[i]

Ecostore is constantly working to reduce their reliance on plastic and has recently launched new plastic free products such as their hair care bars, Dish Bars and Toothpaste Tablets. While plastic free products are the ultimate goal, there is still currently a need for plastic packaging and ecostore are taking responsibility for what they produce.

“We are always asking ourselves, ‘do we need plastic for this?’ 'Is there something else we can use?’ But where the answer is plastic, we make sure that it’s our responsibility to produce that well, and take care of it at the end of its life – that’s on us, not our customers,” Kraus explains. “Recycling systems here and around the world are overloaded. The current set up just can’t meet demand. This leads to plastic being landfilled, ending up in our environment or being shipped overseas to become someone else’s problem. That’s not good enough!”

In 2020, ecostore introduced their Plastic Return Programme and by the end of last year ecostore had collected a total of 12,845kg of recyclable materials – the equivalent of over 180,000 1L Dish Liquid bottles.

“When people buy an ecostore bottle they know it’s the most sustainable option we can offer. Our bottles are made of a mix of recycled and sugar plastic,” explains Kraus. “They can be refilled at one of over 120 refill stations around the country and when they’ve reached the end of their life, we’ve got over 50 bottle drop locations where people can return them to us. We want to get our bottles back so we can ensure they are remade into new ecostore bottles again, and again.”

Over the last three years ecostore has tripled the amount of recycled material used in their plastic packaging, by the end of 2022, 42% of ecostore packaging contained PCR, or post-consumer regrind plastic.

If current plastic production and waste management trends continue, it’s estimated there will be roughly 12 billion tons of plastic waste in landfills or in the natural environment by 2050.[ii]

Something needs to change and every small step towards better usage, and better management of plastic waste has the chance to make a significant difference.

Ecostore encourages all businesses, big and small, to really consider the changes they can make.

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