Putting Plastic in its Place and Going Glass

As I’m sure most of us have, I have been thinking about this a lot lately, particularly in the aftermath of David Attenborough’s surprise appearance at Glastonbury Festival. In which the TV naturalist applauded the audience for helping the efforts of the plastic-free festival, stating: “more than a million plastic bottles of water have not been drunk by you”. Attenborough has been a pioneer for change since his Blue Planet 2 series aired in 2017, highlighting the presence of plastics in our oceans and the impact it has on the creatures that live within it. Since then the plastic pandemic has, quite rightly, taken the media by storm.

What is the Plastic Pandemic?

The plastic pandemic is concerned with the damage we are doing to our planet through the over-use of single-use plastic and improper waste disposal. But what does this actually mean? The U.K Government website has estimated that there are over 150 million tonnes of plastic in the world’s oceans. This directly affects the living creatures that rely on these oceans to survive, with over a million birds and over 100,000 sea mammals dying, each year, from eating or becoming tangled in plastic waste. By 2025, the amount of plastic in the ocean is set to treble if we do not make radical changes to our current plastic consumption.

Our Plastic Promise

Of course, it seems obvious then that eradicating plastic is the sure-fire way to saving the planet—yes? In an ideal world, a realistic and affordable alternative to plastic would be produced overnight, in reality, radial, cost-effective and sustainable change in a company’s manufacturing process will, unfortunately, take time. Our first step then, as an environmentally conscious company, was to ensure that any plastic we did use was as eco-friendly as possible. How did we go about that? Well, where plastic is used by Bramley, it is 100% recyclable and biopolymer, meaning sugarcane is used in the manufacturing process rather than fossil fuels —making it a more sustainable alternative to traditional plastics. Although a better alternative, we knew that we were still by no means winning at sustainability, because, ultimately, the quantity of plastic being produced was still far too high.

The Refill Revolution

Knowing our production of plastic was still too high, we wanted to encourage our customers to reuse their current bottles, which, at least, would eradiate them from single-use, and so there was – The Refill Revolution. Although not a new concept for Bramley (as we have been providing our wholesale customers with refillable 250ml bottles since our beginnings in 2009), in 2018 we thought it was time to take this one step further, providing retail customers with the ability to purchase 1 litre bulk products for all of our 250ml bottles online. This was met with a flurry of excitement and we knew, although there was still a long way to go, that we were developing our processes in the right direction.

Going Glass

Despite doing our best to reduce, reuse and sugar-coat our plastic practices, our goal was always to use glass when possible. Collaborating with suppliers and working out logistics, whilst ensuring costs for our customers are kept low, all takes time. We are therefore delighted to announce that this month we are finally “Going Glass”— Hurrah! Glass bottle alternatives are now available for all of our 250ml products which can be refilled to your hearts content. We pledge to continue evolving our environmentally friendly practices, but for now, we hope you enjoy our natural products encased in their glossy glass vessels.

Made by Nature – Glass bottled by Bramley.