Good Onya!
Since 2004, Onya have been waging a war on single-use plastics with designing smart recyclable and reusable products; their practical range of the highest-quality shopping bags as well as produce bags, backpacks, bin liners and other clever household products address our plastic epidemic!
Many are won over by their products. Slowly people have been making small changes (one at a time) that really work for them. We’re also been learning new ways on how to be more mindful of how we live; our home is near a beautiful water way and it’s sad to see the amount of waste that is collected in the rubbish catchments, it’s things like this that has motivated us to make better choices about how we choose to live.
Onya supply a range that really address the difficult issues we face with single-use plastic, from the Bread bag which can be used to freeze bread or to keep your bread out fresh for longer, to the produce bags that can come shopping with you. The Onya bulk food bags are another great option; including freezing all types of foods, like bread rolls to storing kale, beans and other veggies. The traditional plastic freezer bag can officially be replaced!
Worth watching a documentary of Netflix (Episode 4 on Plastics) which is about how plastic came about, and like some other things in this world, you wish we all could’ve thought this through better, now knowing the impact! Before World War II ‘Ford Motor Company’ looked at ways to make car parts from plastics produced from soy-based plastic, these auto parts would’ve been derived from crop waste, unfortunately this never eventuated at the time. It could’ve been a very different world if plastic was a plant-based molecule; but plastic in your regular molecule is a polymer with a very widely differing composition, most plastic are based on the carbon atom, which don’t breakdown.
Like the single use plastic bag, they are usually are made from oil, which few microbes can digest so these plastics don't decay easily. Aren’t we all so glad that those grey plastic single use shopping bags no longer exist at the supermarket. But unless they have been put into soft plastic recycling they still exist somewhere in our world. It takes 500 (or more) years for a plastic bag to degrade in a landfill. Unfortunately, the bags don't break down completely but instead photo-degrade, becoming microplastics that absorb toxins and continue to pollute the environment.
The change can start somewhere, it can start small, but the alternatives are endless - there are options! We can all consider and take small steps of change with the products we’re using. Honestly, a turning point for us comes from our 5 year old son – we where using wet wipes at times instead of washing hands because they were an easy accessible option. One day we watched a video of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, specifically about how our rubbish is affecting the ocean birds as well as the marine life. The images and information in this video affected our son, he decided from that moment on, no more. So we now cut up old cloths that we can wet, use, wash & reuse.
The other plastic use that can be cut out are freezer and snap lock bags. This has been harder because some of the things we love to consume come in bags or need to go in bags before going into the freezer. Not anymore, we’ve addressed it by replacing single-use snap lock bags with metal bento snack boxes or reusable silicon storage bags . Other plastic bag use has been replaced by the Onya bread bag, produce bags and bulk food bags. We find that they work well for dry ingredients and other produce that can be frozen or kept in the fridge. We use them, wash when done and reuse. We plan to have them for a long time and we think it’s worth the effort to prevent plastic getting into our rivers and oceans as well as ending up as landfill.
Not to mention that Onya are B-Corp certified, ethically made, are part of the circular economy and give back 1% of total retail sales to environmental non-profits.
Visit our online store to see the Onya range of reusables, from water bottles to bread bags we are proud to be stocking their range!