Waste conscious herbalism in business…?

A temporary title for some working thoughts.

Dirt & Free Herbal Arts uses compostable, reusable, and/or recyclable packaging. Sounds great on the surface — but what does it mean? Come on down into my hyperfixated mind, where I’m constantly weighing environmental impact against all the things I love about doing this work.

“Compostable”

Above: an empty pouch of soft touch herbal tea, cut up for the compost bin

Compost is the nutrient rich end to organic matter like plants and food waste, aided by mycelium, insects, heat, and time. My clear tea pouches and all labels including shipping labels are compostable. This means if you do industrial composting through a service, the pouches and labels will break back down and support soil health. The packaging is also safe for home composting, but will be extra slow to transform.

“Reusable”

Above: just-poured tins of salve with calendula flowers floating in the center

Glass bottles, salve tins, and glass jars are reusable and have many great purposes, but first they need to be properly cleaned.

To clean tincture and syrup bottles and jars, separate the plastic parts from the glass. Wash everything with soap and warm water ideally as soon as possible - soak in hot water if needed. A tiny brush or qtip can help to get residue in the glass dropper bulb. Rubbing alcohol is magic for removing extra sticky labels from bottles. Let everything air dry completely and re-assemble, or go a step further and sanitize the bottles. To sanitize glass bottles, you can boil them for 20 minutes or bake them for 20 minutes at 250 degrees.

To clean tins, first use a napkin to wipe off as much salve as you can. Then wash with warm or hot soapy water to encourage the oils to liquefy and let air dry completely before re-assembling.

Shipping materials are also reusable! Why buy another box?

“Recyclable”

I don’t know who needs this reminder but plastic recycling is a marketing scam funded by big oil to trick people into buying more plastic and securing a bright future for oil industry executives.

Recyclable materials I send out are glass, cardboard, and kraft tape. With glass and cardboard, always reuse before recycling.

But tape —TAPE— is such a pain! Standard packing tape is not recyclable, and its residue is hard to separate from cardboard pulp. Right now I use a kraft tape with rubber adhesive, which can be recycled with corrugated cardboard. Supposedly a water-activated kraft tape would be better, but I could never find an easy way to apply it.

Up-cycling

Above: a stack of shipping materials

For shipping, I generally use recycled boxes and mailers, but every now and then you might get a funky box and bubble wrap. That’s because I also up-cycle shipping materials to keep them circulating longer before they go to landfill.

A lesson learned

Read the fine print — including when there’s no fine print at all. A year ago I hosted a community workshop series to distribute herbal remedies, and purchased a thousand or so kraft pouches from ULINE. I couldn’t find any information about how to dispose of the pouches, and I assumed since they were “kraft” they would be compostable or recyclable. Nope! I still have some leftovers that come in handy for the herb exchange and other mutual aid work, but I sigh about it every time.

If you made it here, thanks for reading through. Waste is complicated, and it’s challenging to hold a business in a circular way.

For now I’m opting to be transparent about where I’m at with it rather than pretending my methods are perfect or ideal. And I want folks who choose to order from me to know that waste consciousness requires actions on my part and yours! Yes, to be ecologically minded in this consumerist society you’ll need to do things like clean and sort your materials at their end of life.

We’ll practice together 🌎

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