Julia Kay Co-founder & Co-CEO at Great Wrap
Background
Julia Kay is the Co-founder & Co-CEO at Great Wrap, a material science company manufacturing home compostable stretch wrap made with food waste and compostable biopolymers. Julia spent more than a decade as an architect in Australia and Europe designing buildings with low embodied carbon materials. During this time she was drawn to materials and designs that had a minimal impact on their environment, yet unfortunately saw copious amounts of materials arrive on job sites wrapped in petroleum-based pallet wrap — enter Great Wrap. With her husband Jordy, they’ve taken on the global plastic pollution crisis and built a successful start-up in Melbourne — offering compostable cling wrap for home and compostable pallet wrap for businesses in Australia. At Great Wrap, Julia leads design, sales, marketing and branding and was instrumental in the design of their innovation, Great Mate, a reusable cling wrap dispenser made from recycled PET bottles.
Great Wrap – Cling
To provide insights into sustainable packaging, Tim Langdon, publisher of Eco Voice, had the pleasure of facilitating a Q & A with Julia Kay, Co-founder & Co-CEO at Great Wrap.
Q1 . What is Great Wrap focused on when it comes to sustainability?
From the start, our goal has been to end the existence of traditional stretch wrap. By making compostable stretch wrap for homes and businesses, we’re trying to reduce the amount of plastic going into our environment and, eventually, the amount of plastic manufactured globally.
Q2. Why is sustainable packaging important?
Sadly, humans produce around 400 million tonnes of plastic waste every year worldwide, and 40% of that comes from packaging.
Only 9% of plastic waste is recycled, with the rest either incinerated or ending up in landfills and the environment, where it can take more than 400 years to break down — leaving harmful chemicals along the way.
We know that the way plastic is manufactured, used and disposed of simply doesn’t work, so we’ve created a compostable material that doesn’t take 400 years to break down.
Q3. Are the food manufacturing, supply chain and logistics sectors interested in Compostable Pallet Wrap? (Provide examples)
Yes definitely! Many Australian businesses have strong environmental goals for the coming years, and we’ve received many enquiries from different sectors wanting to use our Compostable Pallet Wrap in their supply chain.
Food manufacturing businesses are some of our biggest customers. Here’s what two of them have said:
“Using a product like Great Wrap just fits in with what we are trying to do at Spiral Foods…We want our products to be as natural as possible and our packaging to be as sustainable as possible, so using a compostable pallet wrap is another piece of our puzzle.”
— Raphaelle Wilson, Spiral Foods
“Great Wrap solves one of the biggest waste issues we have in restaurants. It works just as well as plastic cling wrap, and we no longer feel guilty for using it.”
— David Moyle and Matt Stone, Harvest
Q4. What are the existing barriers to widespread adoption of Compostable Pallet Wrap and how can these be overcome?
When we launched, the price difference was a barrier for businesses in adopting a compostable pallet wrap. Since we started developing it, we’ve been working hard to refine our operations and have reduced the product cost.
We’ve also found that larger national companies take a long time to test new products in their supply chains and might have existing stock of traditional pallet wrap to use before they shift to Great Wrap. But our team is supporting these clients through this process from start to finish.
But we now have many satisfied customers, and we’re building trust in our community by sharing our customer stories like our recent partnership with Spiral Foods, which demonstrate that our product is strong and fit for purpose.
Q5. Are your competitors increasingly thinking about sustainability in your business sector?
Right now, we are the only manufacturer of compostable stretch wrap in Australia, and we see our direct competitors as plastic manufacturing companies because — eventually — we want the whole world to adopt compostable alternatives into their supply chains.
We believe most businesses are looking at sustainability in some capacity. Any responsible company will have its ESG goals in mind when it comes to its operations and product development — and it’s only a matter of time before all businesses have to meet standards set by the government to reach climate change deadlines.
Q6. How can publications, such as Eco-Voice, play their part in promoting a move to more sustainability in your business sector?
It’s so important to us that publications like Eco Voice feature businesses that have a focus on sustainability — particularly B Corps! If Australian purpose-driven manufacturers can share their message and story, the more likely it is we’ll see large businesses adopting compostables into their business.
ABOUT ECO VOICE
First published in 2003, Eco Voice is your go-to publication for sustainability news in Australia. Eco Voice prides itself as an independent news platform with a clear focus on sustainability, with articles coming from a diverse range of contributors – all levels of government, corporations, not-for-profits, community groups, small to medium sized businesses, universities, research organisations, together with input from international sources. Eco Voice values community, conservation and commerce. Eco Voice is a media partner of the prestigious Australian Banksia Sustainability Awards – The Peak Sustainability Awards.
ABOUT GREAT WRAP
We are Great Wrap, a B Corp Certified material science company on a mission to end the human reliance on traditional plastics.
We saw a materials revolution happening around us. Everything was changing rapidly; energy, transport, and agriculture, yet plastic stayed the same. We knew the technology existed to put an end to plastic waste, but there weren’t any products available on the market for us to use. That’s when Great Wrap was born. We invented the products we knew the world was missing so we could dump plastic once and for all. We are driven by impact, fuelled by demand, and have a 10-year vision for a world where plastic doesn’t exist.
Since our launch in 2019, we’ve gone through significant growth and have now established a manufacturing facility in Australia. We now proudly manufacture the only Australian made compostable cling wrap, and we recently launched the world’s-first Compostable Pallet Wrap made with food waste and compostable biopolymers.
