Surrounded by rolling fields at the end of a half mile farm track just outside Stamford sits a small rural factory producing the eco-mate range of plant based liquids from hand-wash to washing up liquid to laundry liquid in the worlds very first plastic free paper bottle.
SUPA (stands for Single Use Plastic Alternative) Innovations is a micro company with under 10 people working super hard on their mission to reduce the consumption and circulation of plastic bottles. It’s unique plastic free (yes even the liner is made from 100% natural pine sap) paper bottles with bamboo caps are made from pressed recycled paper which is formed into two halves that are then bonded together with a natural adhesive and coated with the pine sap to give the water re tension properties. SUPA says that each bottle it produces for its eco-mate range of liquids removes around 40grams of plastic (the average weight of a plastic bottle) from ever being produced. Since the small company started production of its products in 2020 the company has produced tens of thousands of paper bottled products eliminating around 500tonnes of plastic and replacing it with a bottle made entirely from natural materials that will biodegrade back to nature if and when it finds itself discarded in our eco systems.
Their signature product is their hand wash which features bio plant based components to wash hands killing 99.9% of bacteria without alcohol that drains the hands of moisture and requires chemical refining. The liquids are very effective and unique in their plastic free packaging. There’s no mistaking that the bottle is made from paper and comes with its own reusable black metal push dispenser which fits the refill bottles that the team at SUPA have worked hard to create a product that ticks all the eco boxes.
This tiny rural based business on the edge of Rutland has been the first company in the world to produce a completely plastic free paper bottle for its products and enjoys international customers from LA to Poland to India to Liverpool…we will ship anywhere in the world and continue to look for wholesalers who are interested in holding stock of our products.
The company’s washing up liquid is another firm favourite with customers and again the reusable metal push dispenser fits also. “It would have been easy to have taken one of the existing paper bottles on the market and integrate into our business but when we investigated not one of them was plastic free and they all had plastic inside as liners from bags to coatings which feels a bit of a scam! “ said Dave Ashton who heads up operations in the business.
“So we designed and made our own paper bottles with a truly natural liner that we mix and apply in house.
We were asked recently if we were B-Corp certified or had LCA’s for our products but that corporate tick box stuff isn’t our culture…we are more authentic, we generate our electricity from the PV on the roof not because it saves us money but because we are off grid and have no choice” he added SUPA has all its liquids and packaging independently tested to prove 100% bio based and plastic free and recycles everything including its FSC cardboard used to make its boxes for shipping. “We are 100% privately owned with no VC backing, growing the business organically without debt” added co founder Rachel Owen “it allows us to keep things simple with decisions being made in house for the good of the products or customers rather than external stake holders” she
added.
www.eco-mate.co.uk