New Australian brand Tea Trees Eco Ware launched their environmentally friendly cleaning products in an effort to stop single use plastic waste.
According to WWF, Australian’s use 130kg of plastic per person each year. Only nine per cent of that is recycled and up to 130,000 tonnes of plastic will find its way into our waterways and into the ocean. Tea Trees Eco Ware was founded in Torquay, Victoria by Saskia Angel & Stu Atkins in 2020 after seeing firsthand beaches in Asia completely covered in domestic plastic waste.
“With a large family and a lot of plastic waste being generated, we knew our habits had to change. We set about reviewing our own waste footprint and found there was a completely unnecessary amount of single use plastic being generated,” said co-founder Saskia Angel. “The cleaning aisle of a supermarket is riddled with single use plastic cleaning products, which is rarely refilled or recycled.
“The industry isn’t committing to reducing environmental impact of plastic quickly enough, so we want to shake up the major players. Most homes (ours included) have many bottles of cleaning product cluttering cupboards which ultimately get thrown away and end up in landfill or worse. We wanted to start a business which actively impacted the amount of plastic waste being saved from landfill,” co-founder Stu Atkin said.
Tea Trees has aimed to combat this with their range of products such as a dissolving eight gram tablet, long life fully recycled Australian made bottles and 100 per cent plant-based bamboo and cotton cleaning cloths which can be rewashed hundreds of times. “We found it amazing that consumers were comfortable paying cleaning companies for products which were made from 95 per cent water. There is little to no opportunity to re-use the plastic bottles and at around half a kilo each bottle, the shipping generates millions of tonnes of C02 each year. Not only this, but many products are not environmentally friendly, are harsh on our senses and don’t clean very well,” said Saskia.
“Too often the eco – friendly options are more expensive. Our focus is to not only be completely focussed on improving environmental outcomes, but to be more cost effective. Our packaging is also all recycled or recyclable – no plastic, no excess, nothing fancy. Simply a great quality cleaning product which is gentle, uses less plastic and reduces clutter in cupboards around Australia,” Stu said.
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