How To Find Sustainable Raw Materials For Your Business
How difficult is it to find sustainable raw materials for my business?
Depending on the industry that you're in, years ago it was very difficult. Now it is so easy to find sustainable raw materials. All you have to do is a Google search. But, in addition to that ,you're seeing that the industry is so developed on sustainable raw materials that they put another condition- organic sustainable raw materials. Now, organic materials are free from pesticides and steroids and growth stabilizers. What it's basically saying is we're going to take this sustainable product and we're going to grow it in an organic material. For example, cotton, well you can have regular cotton or organic cotton - and I think we've all heard about organic cotton. The difference between the two is one is grown organically, so you are going to have some issues, it's not going to be as uniform and your cost might be a little bit higher for organics, but by the time you get an industry that applies its manufacturing prowess, it will possibly be cheaper than normal organic cotton. That's what the big block stores are finding out. The raw material might be more expensive, and that's what I've found, but when you apply manufacturing processes to it, not only does it take dye better so you use less dye, it weaves better. It's, although a little bit more organic, it ends up being easier to work with because you don't have all these modified pesticides and this kind of funky cotton. You can produce a garment far cheaper than a normal t-shirt, and that was a big issue last year. A perfect example that we have in manufacturing, the RICO packets were made from trash, and although the material is not sustainable, it's trash, and it comes from bleach bottles. We're able to actually optically sort out the bottles with a laser technology that enables me to grind and process it faster than when I just put it all together. Yes it costs me more money, but I'm actually able to make boxes faster and cheaper because my material is more consistent. So in doing that, finding organic sustainable raw materials is the new even greener step than just sustainable raw materials.
