You read that right. And it wasn’t that long ago in the scheme of things that we pulled it off, and in our humble opinion, the sustainable packaging marketplace hasn’t been the same since.

Back in 2011, our stand up pouch customer Alter Eco, approached us with a packaging request for something that frankly did not exist. They were selling Fair Trade, Organic quinoa among other products, with a deeply sustainable and ethical supply chain. This brand was a silent leader in the space of “doing things right” along many important spectrums of market dysfunction, and spent a lot of effort to disrupt the status quo. They were on the small side at the time, and didn’t have a whole lot of purchasing power-yet.

They asked us for a "pouch that would go away when the customer was done consuming the product”. They had heard of biodegradable materials and had done quite a bit of homework on their own as far as commercial availability, but didn’t have the ways or means to try to put it all together in a functional way to at least try out some of their ideas.

It was an exciting and bold thought to begin with and we were all in. At that point in time, the only frame of reference we all had was the SunChips Bag experiment, which ended in an (unfortunately) embarrassing market failure and pull. We were not going to be them, we were going to learn the lessons and present something better, we just didn’t know what, or how!

The team got down to brass tacks pretty quickly. Our first question was: what were the physical properties that the materials needed to replicate? For one, containment. The bag had to stay together. After all, the primary product we were packaging was quinoa, and no one wanted to be sweeping up a busted bag of quinoa on the floor...we knew we needed to find a resin out there that mimicked the properties of LDPE, the typical sealant layer in a plastic Stand Up Pouch. This is where we started our search.

If The Shoe Fits...

In our global search for materials, we came across an Italian supplier providing resin made from Non-GMO cornstarch as a main ingredient. When extruded it was stretchy, which is exactly what we needed for the interior of our pouch. The primary customer of this resin was....a doggie poop bag company based in the US called BioBag, those ubiquitous green bags we use to make us feel a little less guilty about sealing up dog waste in a landfill forever...we convinced the company to partner with us as a food contact film supplier (they were already approved for food contact) and they sent us test reels to get started on our Frankenstein mission. The first bags we made were a roller coaster of elation...followed by crashing disappointment. What we didn’t consider on construction of the bags was the effect of heat in the heat seal areas....we essentially “cooked” the outer cellophane layer and corn layer (yes it smelled pretty interesting) and our beautiful round 1 bags were but a pretty picture as they immediately fell apart when we filled them with quinoa.

Over the next 4 years, we kept learning and iterating and expanding our increasingly family-like global partnerships. In the meantime, Alter Eco became a leader in quinoa sales in the US and it was becoming their biggest mover, to the delight of their farmer network and hard working team. We experienced every lesson (un) imaginable, from butter-like delaminations, to more material cooking, to the fluid dynamics of quinoa affecting seal strength as it dropped to the floor (this is a real thing, called a “drop test”), to fracturing, to adjusting our sales team and customers to tolerating a stand up pouch with no zip-lock (gasp!).

In 2016, we all decided that the 5th iteration was market ready, and we made the plunge. Quinoa sales were strong, and Alter Eco knew they could tolerate the risk. They launched with a campaign called “Gone4Good”, and the pouch design had a large green band at the bottom, so end of life handlers and consumers would clearly know this wasn’t plastic, and it belonged in a commercial compost. It was a hit. It opened sales doors, and was waved around many boardrooms “if THESE GUYS can do this, what are we waiting for?”. It sparked the fire of proof that it can be done. No more excuses, no more waiting for the cost to come down, no more waiting for the perfect materials, no more waiting on laws to change, no more hiding in the corners of “we don’t have a choice anyway as suppliers”.

Now is not over

Since the launch days, we have continued to iterate on the BPI Certified structure and it is now fully sourced from USA-based inputs, and its currently being used across multiple categories where very-high-barrier is not required: snacks like granola bars, frozen bakery products, and even non-food items like natural powdered paint and a bag that collects kitchen grease! Our customers continue to surprise us with new uses for it.

If your brand has interest in a USA sourced compostable film structure, let us know!