At Meo Marley's we're committed to bringing more responsible and efficient options in every single one of our business process. This of course includes our products and their packaging, which we conceived to be reusable for a significant time instead of being single-use and being fully compliant with recycling facilities throughout North America.

Although intentions can be pure, it's also very cheap and simple to take the easy road and order a readily available plastic solution to seal products and most businesses don't take the time to research and source viable alternatives.

After numerous hours of research, a lengthy sourcing process and an even longer testing period to guarantee the product went through our rigorous expectations, we're now proud to seal our consumable products with Biolefin^TM, a 100% Oxo-biodegradable polymer.

The plastic problem

Everybody (we hope) is now fully conscious of the massive environmental catastrophe that is coming towards us if we continue to exploit fossil fuels and their byproducts like plastic at the same pace than in the last 30 years. The real problem doesn't necessarily lie in the plastic itself, but in it's very hard to replicate properties that explains it's omnipresence in every sphere of our society in one form or another and especially how we deal with it once we're done using it.

For us specifically, our challenge was with Shrink Wrapping, which is a very common and easy to implement technique in every industry imaginable. It's a simple action where a plastic is heated and quickly shrinks to fit perfectly the edges of the product to effectively create a "seal" that both keeps the product from interacting with the outside environment and guarantees to the customer that the product wasn't damaged nor tampered with. If our description is too abstract still, think bottle of cough syrup or mouthwash, that plastic thing on top.

Problem with plastics is, even if it can technically biodegrade in the environment, not only does it take hundreds of years to do so but when it does it usually leaves behind a massive number of extremely small particles called microplastics, which are just as bad because they can actually be consumed by animals and enter the food chain, inevitably ending up in our bodies.

You can understand why finding an alternative to harmful plastics was a priority for us right from the start; both for our clients and our planet.

 

The Biolefin^TM solution

Biolefin^TM is a USFDA approved brand of OBD Polyolefin film (yes, we know that's a mouthful) distributed in North America by National Shrinkwrap, a customer-service focused company headed by our friend Art in New Jersey (give him a call, he's amazing). Basically, Biolefin^TM is to Oxo-Biodegradable Polymers what Kleenex is to soft tissues.

Aside from the crazy-long scientific terminology that comes with the product, there's also a lot of VERY cool features, some of which we don't take the most advantage of because of our packaging but we're so excited we'll still tell you all about them!

-Can be heat shrunk with a low-cost heat gun or even a hair dryer!
-Perfectly see-through, what you see is what you get!
-Tough enough to resist scratches during handling and transport!

-Scents are permeable, but our packaging is 100% scent impermeable so that feature doesn't really apply to us.

And of course....

DEGRADES COMPLETELY IN 12-36 MONTHS

(SEE FOR YOURSELF BELOW)

The downsides

We'd love to tell you that we found the perfect replacement to plastic in every way, but unfortunately even a technology as cool as this one has it's drawbacks.

First, since the material is designed to biodegrade under normal environmental conditions, this also means that our shelf-life is limited for products once they're sealed. That's why you'll see on our Herbal Blends product pages that there's a certain quantity available before our next batch so we never send products that aren't top quality to our customers!

Second, while the end of life of the plastic is a lot more eco-friendly than normal plastic solutions, it still has to be made out of petrochemicals (Polypropylene and Polyethylene). Unfortunately there's currently no similar product made entirely out of Bioplastics. :(

 

What's next?

For now we're very happy to be offering a 100% Eco-Friendly service from the product to packaging to delivery and Biolefin^TM was a wonderful addition to our offer. Of course, we're always on the lookout for innovations in the packaging department, and we're definitely enthusiastic about the way the product packaging technologies are heading! 

 

But what about your information sources?

Well aren't you a curious one! Find all our sources below, we hope you'll learn as much as we did!

Centre National d'Évaluation de Photoprotection (Université Blaise-Pascal)

National Shrinkwrap - Biolefin^TM Distributor

If there's any information that we misinterpreted feel free to contact us and we'll definitely do the necessary corrections ASAP.