We spoke to the purpose-driven social impact leaders of our partner companies during the COVID-19 pandemic to find out the challenges they faced, how they resolved to overcome them, and their thoughts on accelerating Shared Impact.
In this series, meet Naveet McMahon and Tania Sibree, Co-founders and Directors of bakbamboo.
bakbamboo are consultants and a wholesale supplier of customized eco-friendly products with the aim to provide reusable, durable, and biodegradable materials that can replace everyday, single-use plastic products. As bamboo is at the heart of its business, Bakbamboo supports communities that cultivate and harvest bamboo as accessible sustainable alternatives to single-use plastics.
bakbamboo is a social business that aims at mitigating the use of single-use plastic by promoting the use of products made from regenerative sources. Tell us more about Bakbamboo and the work you do.
We founded BAK Group Ltd, better known as bakbamboo, in early 2019 with a mission to assist with corporate responsibility initiatives in the management of waste, particularly single-use plastic, thereby building a better future for generations to come.
In 2020 alone, millions of tons of plastic bags and packaging, along with other single-use consumer items, formed over 45% of the ocean waste. With the ongoing situation of COVID-19, this number will rise exponentially.
As parents, we are concerned about the legacy we are leaving behind for our children and the significant effect single-use plastic has on our environment – littering our seas, infiltrating our food system, and overflowing landfills. The lives of our children and generations to come will be detrimentally affected if we don’t change our use of single-use plastics now. Our own kids, Bas, Alice, and Keira (B-A-K), have grown up with the understanding that we need to change our habits, outlook, and usage of plastic, and that’s how bakbamboo came to be.
Through bakbamboo, we aim to find pragmatic solutions to this problem. bakbamboo is run with the belief that our current and future generations should embrace alternative solutions and use materials that are kind to the environment. Essentially, we are consultants and a wholesale supplier for customized sustainable solutions to single-use plastics, which are used in large amounts in the hospitality and tourism industry.
As a result of COVID-19, we are also assisting local companies to expand their sustainable product range. One such example is our limited-edition Hong Kong-themed reusable bamboo cutlery sets, another is assisting restaurants to offer limited-edition bamboo bottles for their customers to purchase and reuse as part of our #myrefillbeatslandfill campaign.
Why bamboo? What makes it a feasible solution to the problem of single-use plastic and plastic in general?
First of all, bamboo grows incredibly quickly and reaches maturity much faster than trees, making it a highly regenerative and sustainable crop. Secondly, bamboo is naturally organic. It does not require pesticides or herbicides to grow. And it consumes less water than trees do. Additionally, the fact that bamboo is a light, strong, and durable material also makes it a great replacement for plastic. Finally, Bamboo is biodegradable, unlike plastic, which is a significant source of pollution and will remain on our planet forever.
End-users and consumers are also becoming increasingly accepting towards using bamboo products over plastic ones. Our recent report, Future Sustainability Trends in the Hospitality Industry – Bakbamboo’s Customer Insight Survey 2021 (BCIS 2021), reveals that an impressive 100% of respondents were ready to try bamboo products during traveling and staying in hotels. Additionally, 80% of respondents agreed that bamboo could be a potential alternative to plastic.
