Q&A HERO PACKAGING
Compostable packaging drives Hero Packaging, an Australian founded home-compostable shipping packaging business, has committed to removing plastic from packaging and shipping in Australia and around the world
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ounded in 2018, Hero Packaging, a compostable and zero-waste packaging company, has gone from strength to strength in just three short years. As an Australian founded homecompostable shipping packaging business committed to removing plastic from packaging and shipping in Australia and the world, its co-founders Anaita Sarkar and Vikram Davé share their business journey and what drives the company.
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1. Hero Packaging is a compostable and zero-waste packaging company 2. Hero Packaging is committed to removing plastic from packaging and shipping in Australia and the world
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Q: What is the story behind Hero Packaging and how did it become the business it is today?
Anaita Sarkar (AS): We are a husband and wife duo who are committed to removing plastic from packaging and shipping in Australia. I had a business before Hero Packaging where I was selling handbags and accessories. That business was growing and we were sending out a lot of packages, which was using a lot of plastic. It horrified me how much plastic I myself was generating. We knew there had to be another way to package items without plastic, so we looked for an Australian ecofriendly shipping solution. We looked and looked but came up empty-handed because we only managed to find paper mailers which weren’t waterproof and cardboard boxes which weren’t the right solution for us. So, we began our mission to create shipping mailers that fulfilled our requirements. We worked hard to find supply chain partners who not only use completely renewable materials, but also have environmentally ethical practices and processes. Vikram Davé (VD): We have learnt along the way that recycling is not enough. About 90 per cent of plastics and food scraps end up in landfill, and in that environment, they turn into methane which is a deadly enemy of our planet. So, we decided to specialise in mailers that were 100 10 ProPack.pro August 2021
per cent home compostable, but also made from such materials that if they ended up in landfill, they would still break down with no waste. That’s how our business started. We have our non-padded home compostable shipping mailers, Heropack, and also a padded compostable solution, Herobubble. In 2020, with the online boom, we saw a huge growth in our business – we’re now a seven-figure business with over 22,000 customers including: Cue, Lush Cosmetics, Veronica Mayne and Ripcurl, to name a few. We primarily service Australia but we’re increasing our reach into an international customer base in the US, Canada and Europe. More importantly, we’ve saved over 6,000,000 plastic mailers from entering the planet. We have two parts to our business – in addition to the home compostable shipping mailers, we also have national and international retailers that come to us to get their branding on compostable mailers. In terms of off the shelf mailers, our customers vary from small
businesses – about 80 to 85 per cent – all the way to large online retailers. We also have customers in the custom area – we consider ourselves the colour experts of compostable packaging. So, if brands want that extra bright colour or more than one colour on the mailers, we can create that.
Q: What are the compostable shipping mailers made of?
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: They’re made of a mixture of two things – primarily polylactic acid (PLA), which is essentially cornstarch – that’s the renewable component – and a synthetic, certified compostable substance called perivascular adipose tissue (PVAT). Those two products mixed together creates the certified home compostable material, which is then converted into shipping mailers.
Q: Sustainability is the main message of the business – how has its uptake evolved since the company was created three years ago? www.propack.pro