New Zealand startup Compostic wants to help us kick our plastic cling wrap habit with a range of home compostable alternatives. Simon Pound speaks to founder and CEO Jon Reed in this episode of Business is Boring.

Follow Business is Boring on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favourite podcast provider.

The way we use plastic is pretty buzzy. It’s most often made out of petrochemical materials that aren’t very good for you – then we go and do things like wrap it around our food. These plastics also last for a staggering length of time, breaking down into smaller and more dangerous parts over the next hundreds or thousands of years. 

Yet, so much plastic is designed for single use purposes, and so little is ever usefully recycled. A few years ago, plastic shopping bags became public enemy number one, and the single-use plastic bag was banned. The solution was to replace it in pretty much every store with a thicker plastic bag.

This is how I met Jon Reed. He was an entrepreneur who had a concept for using new, home compostable materials to replace shopping bags. However they got caught up in the ban and he no longer had the business opportunity he’d been building. His solution was to keep going and tackle other plastic in the home. His company, Compostic, makes home compostable cling wrap and other kitchen products, working to replace the staggering amount of single-use and unrecycleable plastic that people use each year.

I’ve worked a bit with Jon over the years, and it’s been awesome to see him grow the company from specialty stores to now be available in most supermarkets here, hundreds in Australia, and launching into the US market.