Husband and wife team, Jordy and Julia Kay (BEnvDes ’14, March ’16), are stretching the packaging market in a new direction in the hope of putting an end to single use plastics.

Ms Kay, who has a master’s degree in Architecture and a bachelor’s degree in Environmental Design from The University of Western Australia, and her winemaker husband created Great Wrap – the only Australian-made, home-compostable stretch wrap. 

It was while she was working as an architect that Ms Kay reached a tipping point and decided she had to do something to reduce plastic waste.

^{Jordy and Julia Kay are hoping to put an end to single use plastics}

“I had spent a lot of time choosing the right timber and understanding where it was coming from and making sure it was grown sustainably,” she explains.

“I was onsite when it arrived and it was wrapped in a petroleum-based pallet wrap. I was like ‘what is the point of all of that time if we’re still not thinking about the supply change and attacking those problems?”

Ms Kay says her time at UWA gave her an awareness of materials and how they are made as well as giving her the ability to find solutions that are feasible in the real world.

These skills were harnessed to produce plastic and catering wraps that are broken down into carbon and water in 180 days.

“Everyone in big business is really excited,” she says. “This product has been a pain point in their supply chain for years and there is really nothing on the market that has been able to help them tackle the problem - we’re not really struggling to sell it which is a great problem to have.”

To create the products, Great Wrap works with a company in Idaho that takes waste from making potato chips and turn it into a biopolymer.

Great Wrap is also looking to expand into food packaging in the next year which means moving from their current solar-powered facility, which is part of a food hub in Mornington, to a second factory in Tullamarine.

“We’ve just found that there is a lot of local potato waste in Melbourne that we’re able to get,” she says.

 “We’re trying to lower our carbon footprint and there’s about 40,000 tonnes close to our next factory … tell everyone to eat more chips.”