Growing up, there were three main lessons that I was taught: be good, study hard, and don’t waste! Coming from a modest background, the important of not wasting has always been very clear to me. These lessons growing up is probably the only reason I eat the first and slice in a loaf of bread, yes, I’m one of those guys!
A Little Back Story
As for our company, I realised that we never intentionally set out to be a zero-waste company, but it is something that just happened naturally. I only really realised we were one only last week whilst I was shopping. I won’t name and shame the shop, but essentially this shop had a little area for buying food. It was one of those places where you can see into the kitchen from the outside. I watched as someone took out an 18-inch pizza from the oven. They realised that half the pizza did not look right, cut it and just binned it. Half a pizza just immediately wasted! That’s 9-inch gone. Well, at least there is still half left right? Wrong! Out of the remainder, only one slice was kept and the rest thrown away. So out of the full 18 inches, only 3 inches were kept, meaning that 83% of the pizza was wasted.
I worked in Food and Beverage and I get it, there are certain standard that need to be followed, and so I can understand where the wastage comes from. But it still broke my heart to see all that pizza wasted.
What Happens to Our Waste?
Welcome to Bluish Pink! We are a start up that makes handmade soap. A start up usually means making a number of mistakes along the way, and occasionally, completely ruining a product. Yup, that’s us!
Like most companies, we want to make the very best products for our customers. We take pride in the soap we create and we would not sell anything that we wouldn’t buy ourselves. But what about the wastage? I’m coming to that!
Due to the standards we follow, we work to ensure that all our soaps meet a specific level of quality and weight. Sometimes when we are making soap, we make mistakes and the soaps do not come out as intended. This was especially true when were just starting off. This was due the trialling, testing and learning phase we had to go through. So, our potential wastage at that point in time was incredibly high.
But what did we do with all that wastage? Bin them? Nope. Straight into the bathroom they went! Even to this day, any soap that do not pass our quality assessments, we store it away and use it at home. Keeping up with the values of my childhood, we don’t waste these soaps. They might not look the best, or they might not weigh enough, but they are still functional as soaps. We are looking forward to introducing more techniques to reduce the impact we have on our environment.
That’s it folks, to follow our journey or to learn more about soaps, check out our blogs, or if you want a peak into what we make, be sure to check out our latest products.