November 15, 2023
In a world that’s becoming increasingly conscious of the environmental impact of our choices, it’s time to rethink even the smallest aspects of our daily routines. One such area where we can make a significant difference is in the way we handle our freshly dry-cleaned items. Instead of opting for disposable garment bags, consider making the switch to 100% recycled polypropylene garment bags. Here’s why this simple change can have a profound impact on our planet.
The Disposable Dilemma
Disposable garment bags have long been the standard in the dry-cleaning industry. They are convenient and serve their purpose by protecting your clothes until you get them home. However, they come at a high environmental cost. These bags are typically made from petroleum-based plastics that take hundreds of years to decompose. As they break down, they release harmful chemicals into the environment, contributing to pollution and harming wildlife.
Instead of relying on disposable plastic garment bags, consider switching over to a more sustainable alternative – 100% recycled polypropylene garment bags. These bags are made from post-consumer plastic waste, reducing the demand for new plastic production, and helping to divert plastic from landfills and oceans.
Eco-Friendly Benefits of Recycled Polypropylene Bags
By choosing recycled polypropylene garment bags, you are directly contributing to the reduction of plastic and landfill waste. Every bag you use represents one less disposable bag in the environment. Producing recycled polypropylene bags consumes less energy compared to manufacturing new plastic bags from scratch. This means a smaller carbon footprint associated with the production process.
Recycled polypropylene bags are designed to be sturdy and long-lasting. They can be reused multiple times, reducing the overall need for new bags. When your recycled polypropylene garment bag reaches the end of its life, it can be recycled again. This closed-loop recycling system further minimizes waste. By choosing these products, you are supporting the concept of a circular economy, where resources are continually reused.
Be sure to bring in your recycled bags to your local GreenEarth Affiliate and take advantage of our gentle cleaning process, using a silicone-based solvent that is non-toxic and biodegradable, ensuring that your clothes are cleaned without harming the planet. GreenEarth also strives to minimize water usage and reduce energy consumption, further demonstrating our dedication to sustainability.
As consumers, we have the power to drive change. By choosing recycled polypropylene garment bags and using GreenEarth Cleaning, you are sending a clear message that sustainability matters. Your choices can inspire others to make similar changes and encourage businesses to adopt more eco-friendly practices.
If you want to take part in these sustainable practices, consider inquiring about the availability of recycled poly (polypropylene) bags or just reusable bags. Switching to polypropylene and reusable bags in general has many benefits, for example, polypropylene is a completely recyclable material. When used more than once, these bags can be recycled again to be used for other consumer items. Another benefit to this is the peace of mind that you are contributing to the reduction of landfill waste.
With that being said, its time to bid farewell to disposable garment bags and embrace the greener alternative. If you want to switch to reusable bags, and are not sure where to start, check out Green Garmento! With their partnership with GreenEarth, you could be supporting two sustainable businesses while reducing your carbon footprint! Making the switch to 100% recycled polypropylene garment bags is a small but significant step towards a more sustainable future. Let’s protect our planet, one garment bag at a time!
About the Author:
Sara Prince is our Graphic and web Designer and Email Marketing Specialist. She majored in Graphic Design at Kansas State University and studied Web Design and Multimedia at the Art Institute of Seattle. She currently resides in Manhattan, Kansas, In her free time, she enjoys oil painting, sketching, and spending time with her family.
Have you noticed more compostable bags lining supermarket shelves? More are recognizing that composting is one of the best things we could do for our environment—but only if it’s done correctly. There are more compostable and biodegradable trash bags than ever before, but this doesn’t necessarily mean that all of these products will quickly and easily break down in a backyard compost heap.
Let’s take a better look at the best compostable bags and the most eco-friendly way to dispose of them. We’ll explore the following topics and bag options:
If you’ve put compostable waste bags in your compost bin, you may have noticed a difference in how they degrade compared to food waste. So, are compostable bags really compostable? Better yet, is compostable plastic actually compostable? When certified, the answer is yes—but with a few caveats.
This article will guide you to the most sustainable compostable trash bags and how to dispose of them for minimal environmental impact.
Compostable bags are designed to break down in a compost setting. This means that certain heat, oxygen, moisture, and microorganism conditions support the decomposition process. While this means that compostable bags are, in fact, compostable, a landfill is NOT a suitable place for them to decompose.
Actually, most compostable bags are designed for industrial composting, where all of these conditions are optimized so that the compostable bags break down in roughly two to six months. Unfortunately, many households don’t have access to these composting facilities—which is where the Lomi comes in.
Lomi kitchen composter is a smell free, mess free way to keep compostable material—including bags—out of landfills. In fact, it uses some of the same conditions you would find in an industrial composting facility! The smart composter looks great atop a kitchen countertop. With just the press of a button, it can handle many compostable bags, transforming them into nutrient-rich dirt!
★★★★★
Lomi allows you to turn food waste into plant-ready nutrients in under 24 hours. Boost your plants while reducing your waste.
Before we continue, we must elaborate on a few popular terms: biodegradable vs compostable. It’s important to realize that “biodegradable” does not mean the same thing as “compostable”.
Biodegradable materials require biological processes, like fungi and bacteria that enable life (bio) to break down (degrade). This will return the materials to their natural elements, BUT it can take decades, or even centuries to do so.
Generally speaking, everything is degradable—if you give biological processes long enough to work their magic. Compared with conventional plastics, biodegradable products are a better choice for our environment as they don’t take as long to decompose, if given the right environmental factors (read: not an anaerobic landfill).
Compostable products, on the other hand, also require a specific environment to break down (like mentioned earlier). However, compared to biodegradable products, they’ll be degradable in a far quicker period of time.
Also, unlike biodegradable products, those that are compostable are made with organic materials and are designed to not leave any toxic residue behind as they degrade (like microplastics).
So, if you want to take out the garbage while supporting a sustainable future, compostable bags are a superior choice to biodegradable bags. To give you a hand, we’ve put together a list of our favorite compostable bags.
The best news? Many of these bags are Lomi approved products, which means they can be composted by the kitchen countertop composter!
To take care of waste in a way that’s better for our world, we’d recommend these five versions of planet-friendly packaging.
There’s more where that came from! Continue reading for more affordable, helpful, and sustainable ways to pack, fill, and carry.
We’d love to (zip)lock up plastic-based food storage bags and throw away the key! These fossil buel-based bags are awful for the environment—even if they do provide a convenient way to carry packed lunches, coffee, and trail mix.
Fortunately, compostable food storage bags are providing a better alternative. Even better, these ones can go into your Lomi.
Sizes: Sandwich, Snack, Quart, Gallon
Material: Bioplastic made from starches of vegetable oils, plants, and compostable polymers
Eco-friendly eating has never been easier, thanks to BioBag. The brand’s resealable sandwich, food storage bags, and snack bags are made from plants and vegetable oils—making them 100% compostable.
And just because they can be sent to a compost facility, it doesn’t mean they’re not sturdy. You can fill these bags with work lunches, leftovers, and on-the-go snacks. They’re suitable for all types of food, including acids and fat.
Don’t have commercial composting near you? No worries; these can go in your Lomi instead. Check out our test results to see how they break down!
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Sizes: 12-16 oz (5.7” x 9.5” x 3.4”)
Material: Bio-resins and wood cellulose
Zero waste coffee can be hard to come by—but not with Elevate! Their transparent block bottom bags are perfect for coffee, as they have a vent, flat bottom, and superior oxygen and moisture barrier. They can be stored in cool and warm conditions and are even freezer-friendly.
Unlike the paper bags usually used for coffee (which are lined with plastic), all components of these ones are 100% compostable.
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Sizes: 1 Gallon
Material: Corn starch, PLA, and PBAT
Simply Clean also makes compostable food storage bags. Though their original purpose is for preserving food, they can also be used for trash. They’re only one gallon, but they’re strong, durable, and easy to take with you. A standout feature of this product is that you can drop it into Lomi when you’re finished with it. The composter will fully break down your bag in less than a day.
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Sizes: Sandwich, Snack, and Gallon
Material: PLA, BPAT, and another biopolymer
Breaking down faster than an orange peel, these resealable gallon bags can be home composted, breaking down in just 12-24 weeks! They’re ASTM D6400 certified to be home compostable and will break down even quicker in an industrial compost facility. They come in compostable packaging printed with soy and water-based inks, too.
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For more information, please visit HuaWei.
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What’s better than the best kitchen trash can? One that’s lined with a compostable trash bag, of course! The following compostable and biodegradable garbage bags may not necessarily make trash day any less stinky, but they are making it more sustainable!
Sizes: 13 gallons, 3 gallons
Material: PLA made from corn, cassava, sugarcane, beets
They may be light on our planet, but these trash bags are tough enough to avoid tearing. Through home composting, they’re designed to degrade within 12 months, and just 180 days in commercial composting facilities.
Suitable for bathroom or office waste, they also have a Small Bin Bag (3 gal). Check out these test results to see how thoroughly these bags broke down in the Lomi instant kitchen composter!
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Sizes: 13 gallons
Material: PLA and PBAT
Trash day can become zero waste day when Full Circle is involved. Their compostable bin liners are designed for maximum strength (read: leak proof and resistant to tearing). They even have a tough drawstring!
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Sizes: 3 gallons
Material: Bioplastic made from starches of vegetable oils, plants & compostable polymers
As one of the most eco-friendly products to have on hand as you begin your home composting journey, these bags hold your food scraps until they’re ready to go into the compost bin. Then, they can be tossed right in with the stored food scraps!
While you’re at the grocery store, you can also use these as carry bags for your produce. Since they’re made with non-GMO materials, you won’t have to worry when they touch the food from your favorite organic market.
Made with plant starch and other compostable bio-based materials and polymers, these bags can be commercially composted and are degradable through backyard home composting, too.
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Sizes: 13 gallon
Material: Corn and plant-starch
These garbage bags are thicker than many of the alternatives, which helps to keep odors at bay. They fit well in conventional trash cans and are easy to tie. You might just want to be careful with lots of liquids, because they’re not totally leak-proof.
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Top eco-friendly companies are stepping up their sustainability game by using compostable packaging as an alternative to plastic shipping mailers and shopping bags. Here are a few companies that have been Lomi tested and approved.
Sizes: SM, M, L, LL, XL, XXL TR, UBER TR
Material: Non-GMO corn starch, PLA (corn-derived), PBAT
Fully biodegradable and certified home compostable, these mailing satchels are a more sustainable way to ship. The black, white, and blue versions are stretchy—but also tear resistant. Even better, the larger sizes (TR) have two seals so that the mailers can be reused as a carry bag.
Toss them in your compost bin, worm farm, or bokashi bin and they’ll break down in 3-6 months. Put them in your Lomi and and you can expect to see the same as these before and after photos.
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Sizes: 13” x 10”
Material: Bio-resins and wood cellulose
Incorporating all the benefits of conventional plastics and traditional shipping mailers, these ones are much gentler on the Earth! They won’t break, even when you fill them with books, soft goods, apparel, and more.
For a shop purchase, Elevate also has compostable cellophane bags and transparent compostable flat pouches (suitable for spices, jewelry, cosmetics, etc.). You can even top them off with one of their sunflower sugarcane stickers or compostable round stickers!
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Sizes: S (9.8” x 13.8”), L (11.8” x 15.7”), XL (13.8” x 20.1”)
Material: PVA, starch, glycerin, water
Sustainable fashion just got a lot more sustainable with #INVISIBLEBAG. This company makes garment bags, white shopping bags, and black mailer bags that are water-soluble, landfill biodegradable, non-toxic, and compostable.
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Sizes: 350mm x 415mm; 7 other sizes available
Material: Proprietary blend of of biobased and fossil-based polymers
Using home compostable, transparent single-ply film, Tipa is revolutionizing the way garments are packaged and mailed. These bags are a great alternative to polybags and different sizes and thicknesses are available.
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Conventional bags made with petroleum are a big environmental no-no. But their compostable alternatives really only contribute to sustainability when the right composting method is used.
We know that composting is worth the effort, but there are some caveats. For one, many bioplastics and biodegradable plastics aren’t as compostable as many people believe.
Also, for people who don’t have local industrial composting facilities nearby or have backyard compost bins without the optimal heat, oxygen, or microbial conditions, a bunch of compostable trash bags can end up turning into a slow-to-decompose mess.
Worse, compostable bags end up in landfills, they release methane like other garbage.
Lomi is here to change all of that. When it comes to all of the compostable materials that can go into Lomi, the list is long! In addition to food scraps, Lomi can Lomi approved bioplastics and non-food items like compostable bags, utensils, and packaging.
There’s really no better way to deal with a weekly compostable trash bag than with the Lomi—just ask the thousands of households that have turned to this smart composter!
Written by: Heather Seely
If you are looking for more details, kindly visit biodegradable garment bags.