Our Plastic Bottle takes us Places!

Posted by Craft & Culture - Kombucha, Kefir & Probiotics Singapore Admin on Feb 01, 2017

Since Craft started in 2016, we started out using glass bottles and offered a recycling campaign to reduce waste. Everyone loved the idea, and we were able to do it as we were new and our orders were manageable. Although we mentioned that the bottles had to be clean and dry when returned, this was not the case.

As we are only a team of 2 (for now), we ran into some issues :

We are unable to cope with the cleaning, sanitizing and weight of carrying pickup in glasses on our end. Each glass bottle is a hefty 500g when filled and if we have 20 bottles for pickup...well you do the math.
A lot of customers like the idea of reusing but are not educated on how to properly clean the bottles. Often, we get glass returns with mould and existing residues of brews inside. We discard any bottles with mould unopened as this is a food safety issue - once again, no recycling there.
In our 1 year tenure using glass bottles, an overwhelming 90% of orders are discarded in one use/not recycled. We've seen several customers throw away our heavy duty bottles instead of bringing them home as the bottles are too heavy. People commonly bring up how plastic is not biodegradable, but few are aware that producing a glass bottle has several times the carbon footprint of a plastic bottle when used only ONCE.

In between a rock and a hard place, Craft & Culture has decided to use food-grade plastic bottles from now on, while promoting the reuse of our plastic bottles. Food Safety-wise, inert plastic also means that organic acids produced by Booch and Milk Kefir do not react with the bottle.

We carefully tested it and the heavyweight material holds up against air pressure created by our live brews during fermentation.

Deceptively petite, our cute plastic bottle holds the same volume of liquid as the glass one! Both are 250 ml each except that the petite bottle is a lot easier for you to Reuse and carry in your bag.

Suggestions for ReUsing: (Pls do not discard after one use!)

-Water Bottle. Small enough to not add bulk in your bag.

-Flight Travel. Light enough to check in on the plane. Our customers bring our brews on vacation too! After all that sightseeing and gorging on good food, your gut needs some TLC too.

-Perfect size for body wash, liquid detergent etc. Looks pretty too.

-Snack bottle for dried fruit and nuts

-Growing garden herbs

Beyond the obvious ease of this new bottle, we are hoping to reduce paid delivery charges for our customers too. If you have more suggestions on how to reuse our plastic bottles, please post them below!