Plastic Negative

By going Plastic Negative with rePurpose Global, we are dedicating a percentage of each product we sell to fund the removal and recycling of twice as much plastic waste from nature as we use in our packaging. Under our Plastic Negative Certification, all of our products will carry a negative plastic footprint.

Through our partnership with rePurpose Global, we are supporting Taka Taka Solutions in Kenya to employ and empower marginalized waste workers to ethically reclaim and dispose of low-value plastic waste. This is plastic that would otherwise be landfilled, burned, or flushed into waterways and oceans.

Waste worker communities who work with rePurpose Global’s partner organizations form the backbone of our Plastic Negative Certification. As you may know, millions of workers are engaged in informal recycling efforts across cities in the developing world - from Nairobi and Rio de Janeiro to Mumbai and Jakarta, they play a crucial role in dealing with the consequences of our consumption. Yet, their environmental work remains unsung and these marginalized communities barely earn livable wages. Many of them are children who weather harsh working conditions and are stuck in a cycle of abject poverty.

Your sapling purchase is helping rePurpose Global and its waste management partners to add crucial income streams for informal waste workers and their families. Through our Plastic Negative contributions, rePurpose Global pays ethical wages to waste workers for collecting hard-to-recycle, low-value plastic waste items (e.g. chips wrappers). These are items for which they don’t receive compensation in the current recycling market. Our partnership with rePurpose Global also funds their emergency food provision campaigns, as well as healthcare initiatives, educational programs, and more, all of which support the wellbeing of vital waste worker communities. In this way, waste workers are fairly compensated for their important work of diverting plastic waste that would otherwise pollute our natural world and contribute further to the current ecological crisis we face.

To ensure that we are creating genuinely positive impact, rePurpose Global employs strict verification measures. They conduct spontaneous spot-checks at recycling facilities, provide detailed reports on plastic recovery and offset, and ensure that their Plastic Offset Protocol is followed with total precision. The Protocol consists of operational guidelines that help waste management partners carry out their recycling operations in an ethical and efficient manner, ultimately maximizing our positive impact on the ground.

Our waste may be generated here, in United States, but a majority of it ends up being shipped out of sight to be dealt with in the developing world. Developing nations on the receiving end typically lack the necessary infrastructure to handle more waste than their own, which makes them weak links in our global waste ecosystem. In fact, 90% of plastic pollution in the oceans today stems from just 10 rivers, 8 of which are located in Asia.

Although these countries might be thousands of miles away, a lack of resources there results in waste ending up back on our plates, here in United States. This is how we know that our plastic problem is not country-specific. It’s global. And it’s growing exponentially, with developing countries bearing the brunt of it all. To solve this problem on a global scale, we need to empower plastic waste innovators in countries that have been forced to take on more waste than they can manage.

Let’s face it. Our world is simply not dedicating nearly enough money to address the greatest challenge facing our humanity: climate change. Today, governments are either slow or unwilling to take decisive action. Institutional investors do not see the returns they need to aggressively deploy cash and philanthropy is simply not enough to make a dent. To stand a chance of avoiding humanity’s oblivion, our world desperately needs businesses to scale up solutions across every climate challenge, today. Plastic Negativity is one such solution. It has the potential to mobilize billions of dollars of financing and close the $50+ billion/year cash gap in one of these challenges: plastic pollution.

Every dollar of our Plastic Negative contributions is invested in improving and expanding waste management infrastructure globally. We’re strengthening existing waste management systems, allowing them to take on even more plastic waste which would have otherwise polluted the outdoors.

However, even given the huge impact of our Plastic Negative Certification, sapling is only one brand. We cannot single-handedly end plastic pollution. To truly solve this crisis, we need big brands to step up. By going Plastic Negative ourselves, we hope to ramp up the pressure on larger brands to step up and join the plastic waste revolution.

It's a minimally publicized fact that plastic pollution is a major contributor to climate change. These two deeply worsening environmental concerns are not mutually exclusive—they influence each other.

Oil, natural gas, and coal are the main ingredients of plastic. Emissions from these materials during plastic production is an enormous chunk of global fossil fuel emissions. Despite these harmful effects, Petrochemicals—chemicals derived from fossil fuels and used to make materials like plastics, fertilizers, and synthetic rubber,—are rising in popularity. They’re expected to account for half of the world’s carbon budget (i.e. how much carbon we can emit every year while avoiding an atmospheric temperature rise greater than 2°C). Emissions from petrochemicals will also account for more than a third of the global growth of oil demand by 2030 and nearly half by 2050 — that’s more than trucks, aviation and shipping combined.