Page 24 - Packaging News Magazine Mar-Apr 2021

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IN PROFILE | HERO PACKAGING www.packagingnews.com.au | March-April 2021
Hero delivers compostable mailers
Sydney-based supplier of compostable packaging for e-commerce, Hero Packaging, is on a mission to remove single-use plastic from packaging and shipping in Australia and globally, with its range of
The company claims that the mail- ers will completely break down within 90-120 days in a home-com- postable environment. It says they can also be sent to composting facilities to be properly broken down.
“We have eco-friendly shipping labels too with certified compostable adhesive on the back, which we just launched in the last three months,” explains Dave.
“We are also currently trialling and refining our new range of com- postable branding label sheets, as well as a compostable sticky tape, which we hope will completely replace the use of plastic-based tape in shipping.”
Hero Packaging currently partners with some of the biggest international distributors and SMEs, including Beginning Boutique, Cue Clothing, Lush Cosmetics, Birdsnest, HoMie and Moana Bikini.
“Our goal is to get to that global tip- ping point where there are lots of peo- ple in the market and lots of demand for home compostable material, there- fore, the production capacities increase,” adds Dave.
Over the next few months, the com- pany is looking at expanding in the US, Canada, and Europe, before mov- ing on towards more emerging mar- kets, such as in India and Asia.
Hero Packaging is also exploring a new alternative material, which Dave claims will “revolutionise the way both physical retail stores and online operators package their products”.
“We are not locked into just home compostable materials. We see our- selves as a vehicle for any eco- friendly material or any technologi- cal innovation to bring into the fold,” Dave says.
Heropacks are certified under ABA’s home compostable AS 5810 and Herobubbles comply under the Australian Standard AS 4736. ■
Heco-friendly mailers, writes Jan Arreza.
ERO PACKAGING was founded by “While we were prototyping differ-
husband and wife duo, Vik Dave ent shipping mailers we found out (COO) and Anaita Sarkar (CEO), about certified home compostable in 2018, after previously run- materials, which could be reworked ning an e-commerce fashion into different shapes. Out of that pro- retail business. cess, Hero Packaging was born.”
Over time they became “horri- According to the company, to date, fied” by the realisation that their it has saved over three million plastic
ABOVE: The Hero range is made from plant-based materials such as PLA and PBAT.
BELOW: The mailers are certified as able to break down within 90-120 days in a
home- compostable environment.
small business was producing so much waste, with over 80-100 prod- ucts shipped a day, all in plastic.
They believed there had to be a bet- ter way and set about researching alternatives to plastic mailers. This led them to many companies doing great things sustainably, but they were unable to find a single eco- friendly solution to completely replace plastic shipping mailers.
That’s the moment they decided to prototype and develop a solution themselves, making sure it covered their criteria of being compostable, waterproof, super durable, and able to act like plastic mailers do during the shipping process.
“We were shipping plastic mailers using standard Australia Post mail- ers or other non-branded alterna- tives, and over time we saw that as a real problem,” Dave said.
mailers from entering the system through its eco-friendly range of Heropack shipping bags and its Herobubble padded mailers.
Unlike traditional shipping mail- ers, the Hero range is not made from any plastic. Instead, it comprises plant-based materials such as PLA and a certified compostable material called PBAT, which is a fancy name for what is essentially corn starch and bonding agents.
With the padded range, the mail- ers contain FSC-certified composta- ble paper, while the bubblepack padding is made up of home com- postable materials.
And most importantly, composting the mailers at home is a very simple process – one just has to first remove any labels, then cut up the mailers before placing them in a compost bin as ‘brown’ materials.