How we're reducing plastic at Use-Ta!
Anyone who has ever worked in retail will tell you how plastic-heavy retail can be. Because we mainly sell second hand items, we don't have the mountains of plastic that come with every shipment of individually-wrapped garment (phew!) but even for us, there's always room for improvement!
As Plastic-Free July comes to an end, we'd love to tell you the 3 most effective ways we've reduced single-use plastic at Use-Ta!.
- We've stopped buying 'virgin' carry bags. This took a lot of thought, as we were worried that it would create a major pain in the bum for customers (who usually have their hands full!). Luckily, our community is so rad that we now have a box of used bags at the counter so we're not creating any extra waste, but we can also make it easy to get your goodies home safely.
-
We use a mix of repurposed, compostable, and 100% recycled mailers. If you've received a delivery from us you might already have noticed that the satchel your treasures arrive in might be branded with a different company's logo, or be taped over the original seal, or might be a random box that we had in the store room. We hope you don't mind, it's just that we always prefer to reuse! When our reclaimed satchels are running low, we opt for compostable mailers, or even mailers that are made from 100% recycled ocean plastic. Plus, our deliveries are automatically carbon-offset by Aussie Post!
-
Our tagger-tails are recycled plastic. If you've looked really closely at the tagger tails we use in store, you might have noticed this symbol: ♻, which means that the weird plastic thing that joins your piece of clothing to the swing tag with the price on it is made from recycled plastic. Sourcing these bad-boys was way harder than you would expect, but I reckon it's worth it!