Stem was founded during the Spring of 2020 after we found ourselves on a ‘forced' (!) break from our day jobs in the film industry and we realised we had to take the opportunity to do something good for our industry, community, and planet.

We sell (what we think) are the best food/drink consumable packaging available and our next business aim is to educate our customers and consumers on how to dispose of these items correctly. We feel that education is the most important thing we can do in addition to selling the best products, and we are on a mission to continuously update our website and social media with blogs & information, as well as getting this information into cafes, festivals, film sets and even on the streets. Hopefully you will find the information useful and pass it over to your friends & family and together we can work to reducing waste.

Not only are we interested in educating and selling to the film industry, but we are also keen in 2022 to make sure our hometown (Reigate) and eventually nationally around in the UK. That our customers have the best recycling and composting facilities available to them, whether that’s outside the shops on the high streets, the parks, community centres etc…already each customer has access to a one-page easy guide about how to dispose of our products.

We sell a range of products, including takeaway coffee cups, unbleached food takeaway boxes, compostable cutlery, plates, bowls, soup pots.

We also sell home compostable/plastic-free garment covers which are great for dry cleaners, clothing stores, dress shops, or even home storage.

Information on how disposal instructions:

Home Compostable – can go into home compost bins or composted along with food waste. 90% of the product will disintegrate in 120 days at 25C.

Commercially Compostable – this means there are plant-based plastics in the product, meaning they only can be composted at specialist composting facilities and at very high temperatures.

Recyclable – Usually recyclable through council collections from home/town centres. Recyclable can be better than compostable where you know the items are going to be reprocessed and used again, because if the commercially compostable materials end up the recycling plants they will not be processed and vice versa.

(There is a massive worldwide problem that plastics are ending up in composting facilities due to consumers putting their waste in the wrong bins meaning farmers are spreading shredded plastic onto their land… ultimately these microplastics are in our soil and potentially our food!)

Good to remember

Just because your coffee cup may have printed on it “bio-degradable” or “commercially compostable”, this doesn’t mean its necessarily better for the environment, please check how to dispose of it! These cups are lined with PLA (type of plastic) and if they end up in food waste or recycling, they will contaminate the compost/recycling.

We sell PLA free cups, which are recyclable and HOME compostable, if you can’t compost them, pop them in the general waste bin to landfill as they will degrade down under normal landfill conditions.

Also, another fact to remember and be aware of is:

Be careful of products which are marketed as biodegradable. This might be a company trying to greenwash - Anything/mostly everything can bio-degrade if you leave it long enough to decompose (plastic include)

We would love if you visited our website for more information and to explore our online shop and our great range of compostable & recycling.

If you have any feedback or would like to suggest how our businesses can work together, we would really love to hear from you.

Thank you,

Charlotte & Giles - Simply Stem