Potatoes Not Wasted: Compostable Stretch Wraps Hit the Market

With landfills overflowing with plastic waste, an Australian company decided to develop the first fully-compostable alternative to plastic wrap made from potato waste, and the enterprise is looking to become as circular as possible in the following years.

“We’ve also developed a pathway to convert potato waste into PHA, which is the biopolymer. It performs just like plastic but will breakdown in not only the home compost pile but in marine environments as well,” explains Julia Kay, co-founder of Great Wrap.

The Melbourne-based company was founded in 2019 with the intention to ‘completely knock petroleum plastic off the supermarket shelf’. To make this dream a reality, Great Wrap raised $24 million last year. Its products – pallet wraps and cling films – are completely compostable. For now, Great Wrap imports some of its thermoplastic starch materials made from the waste from potato chip production, but with its project of setting up its own biorefinery next year, it will be able to process local potato wastes, thus becoming almost fully circular and lowering significantly their costs. That way, the company can hope to reach price parity with competitors and make its way into the global supply chains where pallet wrap is indispensable yet currently highly polluting. Great Wrap intends to produce 20,000 tons of its biodegradable wrap by 2025, 5,000 of which will be in 2023.