We live in a world where things are made to be used and chucked out.

The products we buy are designed to serve their purpose and be thrown in the bin. It’s often easier and cheaper to buy a new product than fix anything. And, the things we buy come wrapped in plastic that gets ripped off and goes straight into the rubbish.

The problem with single use plastics

All this has led to the giant waste problem.

Plastic is one of the biggest contributors.

There's plastic in our phones, which we chuck out when a new model comes out.

It's in our clothes that we wear only 7 times on average before we throw them out.

And, of course, it's in the containers that we buy food in.

Single-use plastic is a problem. 40% of all plastic gets sent to landfill, where it will break down over centuries. A scary 32% of it leaks into the environment.

If we keep up at our current rate, there will be more kilos of plastic in the ocean by 2050 than there are kilos of fish.

We're facing a pretty enormous plastic problem but how do we fix it?

The truth about compostables

In the last few years, biodegradable and compostable packaging has seen a big kick.

These are made from plants, not fossil fuels, from bioplastics or other materials that break down faster than normal plastic.

The trouble is that bioplastics don’t break down by themselves. They need special industrial composters. Sadly most biodegradable containers end up in landfill or back in the environment, where they can’t break down properly.

Each compostable container has to be made, transported and regenerated.

They’re designed to be thrown out. In Australia they’re rarely composted properly. That means, despite good intentions, compostable packaging ends up generating waste.

Closing the loop with the circular economy

RePlated began with the idea of making products that aren’t meant to be put in the bin at all.

We base our approach on the circular economy.

Scientists, researchers, industries and governments have come to the conclusion that the circular economy is the way forward. It’s the only effective way we can combat our plastic problem.

Basically, the circular economy is about ending our modern mindset of ‘buy, use, bin’ and starting to think about how we remake and reuse what we already have.

Think about the circular economy as ‘closing the loop’. We take the plastic or other material, use it, transform it into something new and use it again. Over and over and over.

It’s based on the idea that the earth’s resources aren’t limitless and that the waste we put back into the environment is damaging. Recycling materials in the circular economy kills two birds with one stone: there’s less waste and less demand for more plastic production. Everything keeps cycling around the ‘loop,’ rather than sitting in landfill or the bottom of the ocean.

Reusables - the best way forward

Unlike single-use plastic or ‘biodegradable’ plastic, reusable containers are designed to never end up in landfill.

Reuse models are a way of minimising the need for single-use plastic and getting the maximum out of the plastic that we already have.

Plastic is a very convenient, light, multipurpose material and we have plenty of it. We just need to find a way to use it that won’t do any more damage to the earth.

How RePlated provides a solution

Our lunchboxes answer the circular economy’s call to end plastic in landfill in two important ways.

Firstly, we make our reusable containers from 75% recycled PET materials. We save plastic that was going to landfill and transform it into our lunchboxes. And, at the same time we reduce how many new materials need to be produced. We don’t package our containers in plastic.

We’ve also made a promise to keep the loop going and take back the containers when you’re finished with them, to make sure that they don’t go into landfill or end up in the environment.

We’ll turn them into a totally new product, or material. Ready to be used again and again and again.

We believe tackling the ‘use it and bin it’ mindset is one of the most important ways to help the environment.

Our little smashers work hard to close the loop. They are reusables, rather than disposables, and made from recycled plastic, which has been saved from landfill. And by taking back the containers, we prevent them from going to waste.

What Makes our Containers the Best Answer for the Planet?