Wonky bread wrapped in compostable bags

Earth & Wheat was looking for a home-compostable bag for its ‘wonky’ bread box and found a solution from KM Packaging.

Earth & Wheat is an e-commerce operation that directly connects UK bakeries with customers looking to reduce food waste. It delivers perfectly tasty fresh bread that would otherwise have gone to waste due to appearance standards or overproduction while also aiming to reduce plastic waste and carbon emissions as much as possible.

The company was using plastic bags, which were considered incompatible with the brand’s values.

The home-compostable bags from KM Packaging not only meet the eco-friendly and sustainable attributes but also other requirements from the company. These included being able to print on the bag for branding purposes and for the bags to be compatible with the company’s automated bagging machines.

The C-Bag from KM Packaging’s C-Range has been developed in partnership with Treetop Biopak. The bio-plastic packaging has similar properties and look and feel to conventional plastic and includes shrink wrap, stretch wrap, cling film, adhesive tape and nets.

Earth & Wheat founder James Eid said: “Our mission is to reduce food waste in the UK, and we’re always looking at innovative ways to become even more sustainable. By using home-compostable bags in our bread boxes, we have found a great alternative to using plastic.”

The new bag protects, presents and preserves the wonky bread from Earth & Wheat. It will disintegrate in a compost heap and then biodegrade into carbon dioxide (CO₂), water and biomass, leaving no harmful residue behind.

The bio-based bag is made from renewable resources using versatile materials supplied in various grades and meets the Soil Association Standard for packaging materials. It has TÜV certification, which was developed to guarantee complete biodegradability in garden compost heaps and other slower-paced processes. It also has good impact, puncture resistance and material perforation, and can be used as bin liners for organic waste collection.