As we celebrate another Global Recycling Day, it's the perfect time to explore exciting new possibilities for takeaway food packaging. While recycling plays a valuable role in our sustainability journey, we now have the opportunity to reach for even better solutions to our plastic challenges. Despite our collective recycling efforts, the data reveals an inspiring opportunity: we can completely reimagine how takeaway packaging works.

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The inspiring opportunity in takeaway packaging

The numbers point to a clear opportunity for innovation:

• Only 9% of all plastic ever produced has been recycled. The rest ends up in landfills, incinerators, or drifting through our oceans (Source: OECD 2023)
• A staggering 90% of plastic pollution comes from single-use items – those takeaway boxes, food packaging containers, and plastic cutlery that serve us for minutes but persist in our environment for centuries.
• Conventional takeaway food packaging takes up to 500 years to break down. Even then, it doesn't truly disappear – it shatters into microplastics that infiltrate our soil, water systems, and eventually our bodies.

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Why we can do better than just recycling takeaway packaging

While responsible recycling has been a step in the right direction for eco-friendly packaging, exciting innovations now reveal we can aim much higher:

• Manufacturing new plastic is typically cheaper and more efficient than recycling existing materials.
• Different types of food packaging containers can't be recycled together, making sorting processes costly and inefficient.
• Even in optimal conditions, plastic takeaway packaging can only be recycled once or twice before degrading beyond usability.

This creates a perfect opportunity to move beyond recycling toward truly regenerative solutions.

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Nature's solution to take away packaging

At Notpla, we believe the real answer isn't in recycling plastic takeaway boxes, but in eliminating them entirely. Our innovative approach to compostable food packaging mimics nature's perfect design – creating takeaway packaging that disappears naturally, just like a fruit peel.

The Notpla difference:

• 100% Natural: Our seaweed-based food packaging containers naturally decompose - following nature's own cycle so will cause no harm wherever they end up (Tested to EN 13432 standard & BPI Certified).
• Truly Sustainable: Government-verified plastic-free & PFAS-free takeaway boxes - no hidden chemicals, no greenwashing.
• Recycling Compatible: Our coating integrates seamlessly into paper recycling streams (Tested to EN 13430 standard)
• Home Compostable: Our biodegradable food packaging breaks down in soil or saltwater within just 4-6 weeks, leaving zero microplastics behind (Passed OK Compost HOME test).

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Beyond recycling: A new approach for eco-friendly food containers

This Global Recycling Day, we're inviting everyone to think beyond the recycling bin. Instead of asking, "How can we recycle our takeaway packaging better?" let's ask, "How can we create plastic-free packaging that doesn't need special disposal in the first place?"

Notpla’s plastic-free packaging solutions represent a fundamental shift in how we think about takeaway food packaging – moving from a model of waste management to one of waste elimination.

Join us in reimagining a world where takeaway packaging doesn't come with any guilt, require special handling, or take centuries to disappear. Together, we can create a future that doesn't need to clean up after itself.

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Discover Notpla's revolutionary eco-friendly food containers today: www.notpla.com/food-containers

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