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Q3 • 2023


BRANDS WE LOVE


Brands We Love


standard to keep our family and planet safe, shouldn’t we?” Lang says. “I just want to make sure that I do my best to protect the planet (our home) for my children and their children and the future generations to come!” Today, Pela says it makes “everyday


t


he folks at Pela want to create a waste-free future. That’s a rather lofty


goal for a manufacturer of smart phone and AirPods cases, sunglasses, watch bands, and other accessories. But the British Columbia- based brand has a key point of difference up its sleeve: nearly every one of its products is made of a compostable bioplastic engineered from flax fiber that breaks down into carbon, water, and organic biomass. That means you can put your product into the compost when you’re finished with it, and it will break down fully into the soil in less than a year. Pela was founded in 2011, but its story


began in 2008. After the company’s founder, Jeremy Lang, watched his young son dig up plastic on a Hawaiian beach,


he spent years experimenting to find an alternative material that could be used to manufacture the products we use every day—and what’s more everyday than our mobile phones? A materials scientist, Lang recognized that phones are expensive and need to be protected, but not by materials that can carry toxins into our homes. That’s why Pela cases are tested to be free of BPA, lead, cadmium, and phthalates. After much research and trial and error, Lang created a material called Flaxstic™, a unique blend of plant-based biopolymer mixed with flax shive, an annually renewable waste by- product of the Canadian oilseed flax harvest. Lang, it should be noted, comes from a family of Canadian prairie farmers. “If we can make products at a higher


products without everyday waste” and it wants to keep 10 billion pounds of waste from ever being made. The company is trending in the right direction. A counter on Pelacase.com says that Pela customers have prevented more than 48 million plastic bags from entering the planet’s oceans. They also state that 1.54 billion plastic phone cases are thrown away each year. And making compostable phone cases is not the only way the company is helping alleviate this issue of plastic waste: Pela also runs a program called Pela 360. When you order your plant-based Pela case, you can take the “Tradesies” envelope that comes with it and send back your old Pela case or your conventional plastic case. Your old Pela case will be upcycled into a new Pela product or turned into compost; your old, conventional plastic case will be upcycled or recycled. The business model seems to be


working. The company says that more than two million people have switched to


flax shive


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