Uuvipak is reducing plastic waste going to landfill by creating biodegradable plates and cups that you can even eat!
What does your business do, and who are your customers?
At Uuvipak we make 100% biodegradable, home-compostable and edible plastic alternatives by upcycling clean organic food waste. Our customers will be anyone who uses single time plastics. We are starting trials with local coffees, but we’re targeting the packaging industry as a whole, we will be able to create packaging for food, beauty, tech and so many more sectors!
What’s your mission?
Our mission is to free our planet from plastic waste by creating natural materials that the earth will love. Our goal is to replace 1 billion plastic products with Uuvipak, between January 2022 and December 2025!
What does it mean to you, to be a ‘social enterprise’?
Making an impact for the planet and people is what a ‘social enterprise’ is to us.
Plastics are an environmental disaster: they stay with us for thousands of years, devastating our wildlife, waterways and the ocean. Over 300 million tons are produced each year, half of which is used only once. Only a very small percentage of this is recycled and reused.
If you can believe it, it is estimated that by 2050 there will be more plastic than fish in the ocean! We’re focussing on our mission and working to prevent this from happening.
With Uuvipak, we are creating a social enterprise focussed on reducing pollution not only from plastics, but also landfills and at the same time reduce emissions and offer products that are free of microplastics for humans and the planet.
Can you scale a mission? Are there challenges around growing your business, while also staying committed to your impact thesis?
We have been working hard to ensure that we use materials that aren’t already used in other fields, so we don’t end up competing with main food sources: sourcing our feedstock from companies that have a lot of surplus helps us reduce emission and stay cost effective.
We are creating products that we hope will compete on the market with bioplastics and even plastics. Keeping our costs low is crucial to ensure a wide adoption and keep on our mission to eradicate plastic pollution.
Was there a business (either local or globally) that influenced the development of your organisation?
We were inspired by many companies around the world to move towards sustainability. There are some incredible projects in Australia and the world, like Ocean Cleanup, ZeroCo, and Who Gives a Crap that are working to make an impact to save our one and only planet.
After months of research, we were stoked to have found a unique solution to two massive pollution problems: plastics and organic waste.
What’s in store for your business in 2022? (eg. New products? Growth aspirations? New hires?)
We just launched our first product, edible cups!
We aim to start trials in several places by the end of June 2022, and expand all over Australia by the end of 2023. Look out for some Uuvipak cups at your local cafe, pre-order a pack of 10 from our website!
The focus for the rest of the year is to further develop our cups, start a small scale automated manufacturing in Australia as well as explore and trial Uuvipak in other industries, like food and beauty packaging.
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