During a time when supermarket employees are being strangled for single-use plastic bag bans, there’s only one thing to do: keep up the fight against plastic and change one mind at a time.

First stop: the postal service industry.

With the discourse around single-use plastic causing stirs in the political and social arena, Sendle, Australia’s only 100% carbon neutral courier service, has started trialling biodegradable postage satchels.

More and more of us are choosing cans over bottles, or we’re bringing our own reusable bottle to refill. We are even phasing out plastic straws. Us consumers have not only become more educated about the detrimental effects plastic can have on the environment, but we’re also more aware of corporates’ decisions that prioritise profiteering over long-term environmental sustainability.

As we’ve said before: “plastic isn’t all that fantastic“.

Sendle green satchels. Image: Supplied

Sendle’s biodegradable satchels look and feel like plastic but are actually made from corn starch with a binding resin. This makes them waterproof, tough, flexible with some stretch, tear resistant, stickable, writable, printable and reusable. They have passed Australian-standard worm toxicity tests, making them not only biodegradable but also 100% compostable. When your biodegradable Sendle satchel is too worn for further use, simply chuck it in the garden compost in your backyard or give it to your friend if they have one.

CEO and co-founder James Chin Moody says their trial shows how Sendle is committed to helping businesses at the smaller end of town succeed.

“Sendle is making it easy for Australian small businesses to ship responsibly and set a new norm for online retailers to use environmentally-friendly materials,” James said.

“By offering compostable satchels, Sendle is levelling the playing field for Australian small businesses, enabling them to offer their customers the types of sustainable options that are often only reserved for large businesses.”

The parcel delivery service industry creates a colossal amount of plastic waste while also being on track to reach a worth of US $343 billion globally by 2020 – which means even more waste. And remember, plastic takes 1,000 years to break down. James, with Sendle, wants to combat that.

“Sendle is Australia’s first and only 100% carbon neutral delivery service and a certified B-corp, but our pledge to the environment goes further,” James said. “We support a circular economy in which generating endless waste is not an option and the earth’s resources are not treated as infinite.

“We need to change the discourse in Australia from ‘recyclable plastics’ to compostable materials that at their end-of-life return to nature, a process that can happen without any loss of convenience or performance in the parcel delivery process.”

With the trial starting today (September 12), their aim is to gather feedback from Sendle customers and get a deeper understanding of the issues from small businesses and their customers about what works best for them. As a bonus, the first 100 eligible Sendle customers to register interest for the trial will receive 100 free satchels, with the satchels slated for sale later this year.

Click here for more information and to register for the trial.