Part 1 of Marion Vigot’s Interview
We spoke to composting goddess Marion Vigot, as part of our series about sustainable businesses – and we talked about all things composting. Marion runs two sustainable businesses, Compostable Alternatives and Responsible Cafes. She also travels Australia in a converted van, spreading her message as a real life sustainability superhero, with her partner Alexis Branlard.
In this first part of our inspiring interview with her, she talks about her journey creating Compostable Alternatives.
Podcast Interview Marion Vigot Part 1- Video & Audio Versions
Marion is the co-founder and CEO of Compostable Alternatives, and together with her partner and co-founder Alexis, has made a brand that is 100% Australian owned, certified home compostable, and a certified social enterprise – and it’s all about home compostable packaging solutions.
Compostable Alternatives is a regenerative packaging brand specialising in certified home compostable packaging for cafes. And when they say regenerative, they mean it – their vision is to turn packaging (usually seen as something single use that becomes waste) into compost, and then it will regenerate the earth, instead of polluting it. “If it’s not good for the worms, it’s not good enough.” is their motto for their packaging products.
Single use plastic ban compliant, the products are sold online from their warehouse in Adelaide – and Marion and Alexis are travelling Australia in their campervan, visiting the cafes that they work with.
Their vision is a world where we don’t need single use plastics at all, where everything that cannot be reused is composted at home, or at the cafe. They are passionate about reducing the need for cafes and businesses to be using single-use plastics, and they work closely with cafe owners to help them with their sustainability strategy and circular systems.
Compostable Alternatives: It Began with Compostable Straws
Marion told us about how the story started back in 2019 when Marion and Alexis moved to South Australia as part of a new entrepreneur visa called Supporting Innovation in South Australia. At the beginning were compostable straws.
At the time they were both in Australia looking to pursue sustainability initiatives, and they started looking at launching the first plant based compostable straws, in partnership with local organic farmers. They were looking to use the by-product of production from growing rye – the rye stalks. These are a replacement to single use plastic straws. These compostable straws became their first product and business, and it was called Mister Rye.
Rye is a strong plant that is being grown and used in flour, beer and bread production. It is easy to grow, and using the stalk as a by-product is a great idea. The straws can be used for cold, hot and fizzy drinks and are durable. Here is a video that ABC Landline did about the project in 2020.
At the time, South Australia was banning the use of single use plastic straws, cutlery and stirrers, so it was a great time to be in this space. It was a time for them to learn the challenges of manufacturing in Australia and while they learnt a lot, and it led them down the path of manufacturing, they are not manufacturing the straws anymore. These days they sell grass straws instead here at Compostable Alternatives.
But it did teach them that it is possible to replace single use plastic with products that are naturally made from plants or from agricultural by-products. And it is possible to have a product that is home compostable, and it is possible to make these in Australia.
They also realised that there are two types of compostable packaging on the market: commercially compostable packaging and home compostable packaging.
The rye straws were home compostable as it was just a dried out rye stem, and they were really interested in this as anyone can compost them at home, in a home compost bin, with no need for extra facilities or infrastructure.
Compostable Alternatives: Now
This led to the launch of Compostable Alternatives in 2021. They wanted to focus on products that can be home composted by anyone and anywhere. They wanted to make it easy for people to do the right thing.
Ideally all single use items should be home compostable – this is Marion and Alexis’ dream. Composting is nature’s recycling, it is the best and most sustainable way to handle food and garden waste, and if we could also compost any single use items, we truly would be on the way to a circular economy.
All the products at Compostable Alternatives are certified home compostable, and they started with a very small collection of items, and since have been growing their collection of packaging alternatives.
They have coffee cups and lids, cold cups and lids, gloves, coffee trays, carry bags, grass straws, paper straws, produce bags, bin liners, customised stamps, cling wrap, paper bags, napkins, and takeaway boxes – all of these are home compostable.
They also have a really fun ink pad and stamp, for cafes to stamp their logo onto their packaging. These are made to order with your logo on the stamp and come with an ink pad. This means you don’t have to order extra printed business material, and you don’t have to use stickers.
Basically there is a selection of everything a cafe needs on a daily basis for take aways.
Their mission is to empower anyone to start composting at home, for their own food but also to be able to process their own products.
This practice makes a huge difference for households, but also when you think of how much waste goes through a cafe or a restaurant every day, the idea that a cafe can be empowered to home compost not only the food waste from the cafe, but also the products and packaging that is used on a daily basis.
Of course it’s not only about the cafes – for home compostable products to be composted, we have to go home and actually put them in the compost bin (or the green fogo bin).
If you have a green fogo bin in your area, and it accepts home compostable packaging (check with your council), then the Compostable Alternatives products can go in there
Compostable Alternatives inspires us to compost at home – and create value, instead of creating waste.
What Are The Home Compostable Products Made Of?
Compostable Alternatives have put a lot of thought into the materials they use. Every product is made from raw material, or bio base, or bio materials that are either agriculture by-products or food waste, or is made from recycled material.
The grass straws are made from grey sedge grass – similar to the rye straws, these are just the grass itself that has been dried.
The coffee cups are made from responsibly sourced paper board (FSC) and the lids are made of bagasse, which is also an agricultural by-product. In order for the product to be waterproof it contains an aqueous barrier coating that is embedded as part of the pulp when the product is manufactured. This means the product is made of only one material and doesn’t have any additional lining inside. Read more here on their website about the materials.
Traditional plastic lined take away coffee cups are not only not compostable, because of the plastic lining, they are also not recyclable and belong in the general waste bin. In Australia, we send a 1.8 billion take away coffee cups to landfill every year, which just cannot go on, so having a home compostable option is a great step we all need to take.
The paper board used in the Compostable Alternatives coffee cup and lid is certified recyclable and can go in the mixed recycling bin. All the home compostable products can go in the green fogo bin, if your council accepts them.
Van Life Around Australia (The Compost Revolution)
Marion and Alexis discovered van life when they moved to Australia, and when they launched Mr Rye they were living in a camper van.
They love the simple lifestyle of being minimalist in the van, and living in the present moment. They have travelled a lot around Australia and they love the idea of preserving the natural landscape and have a passion for sustainability.
Sadly everywhere they go, they see plastic waste, littered in the parks and on the streets. Doing these projects in the sustainability space is their way of being part of the solution, and doing something about it, and feeling like they are making a difference.
Marion and Alexis love entrepreneurship and it’s something they have always done, with other businesses and projects in the past. They see entrepreneurship as a way to create the impact they want in this world, and the future that they want to see. Creating Compostable Alternatives is their way of feeling useful and giving back.
While setting up the business in Adelaide, they did settle there so they could be close by – however the idea was always to get back on the road, and they intentionally set up the business in a way that made sure they could travel and run the business remotely.
Originally from France, they have family they like to visit as well, and these are often long trips, and this was part of wanting to not be location dependent.
The vision was to have this freedom, and to make the business able to be run from anywhere. So from the start they didn’t have their own warehouse or offices in Adelaide. They have a warehouse in Adelaide that can be run from the road – so they have set up a camper van and are travelling Australia full time now!
They are travelling around meeting with cafes. They moved into their bus a few months ago and haven’t looked back. This was a costly project which took a lot of organising and time to set up. They initially bought a bus that was an empty shell – it was an ex school bus with 22 seats.
It took about a year to set up the bus the way that they wanted it. They converted it to be both a home and an office, as they both work from the bus as well. They carefully planned where everything would go following that vision.
And now they are following their dream and following van life. It’s not easy, there are challenges living on the road, but they are pretty organised and are making it work. The project is called The Compost Revolution.
Marion told us that there are three things that are important to them on the bus project:
1- They want to live more in line with their values. This is the main reason they wanted to make the bus project happen and what they love most about living in a camper van. Living simply, having days that are all different from each other, being close to nature, needing less, being less involved in consumerism, having more outdoor activities, and creating less waste.
Being completely off grid and self sustaining. They don’t connect to the grid and instead use solar panels, they know exactly how much energy they need. The same for water, they know how much they use. They are living more consciously.
2- They want to visit the people they are working with, and grow the business by visiting cafes. They have set up their business in a way that anyone in Australia can order the products – but Marion wants to be able to go and meet the people that are ordering and using the products. Not only meet them but learn about them and their challenges, see their business operations, see their space, and their community, see how they are managing their waste.
Part of the travel around Australia is visiting and meeting the customers, the cafes that they work with. They are visiting as many cafes as they can, talking to them about composting and compostable packaging, and giving them education about sustainability in general. And what packaging they could use depending on their waste infrastructure, and helping them understand waste. The packaging world is very complex and it helps to give them information for their specific business.
3- They are looking to meet inspiring people, projects and initiatives. Things like composting experts, community facilities, community composting projects, and any other interesting projects, especially in waste systems and organics. They are enjoying learning about all of these things.
Vision for a Complete Zero Waste Packaging System for Cafes
Marion told us about her vision to create a complete outfit for cafes, a national way that cafes could process their own waste, no matter where they are in Australia. This would be a zero waste packaging system. From whatever comes into their business, to how they process everything, and to add value back into their waste.
For example using the home compostable products for take-aways, and making sure that those products can be composted, either on site or locally, and any food waste at the cafe, are transformed into compost. That compost is then used to grow food, herbs or flowers and either then is used in the cafe – which is a complete circle achieved – or going to the local community.
Giving cafes a complete system where they can handle everything themselves, create value, empower their staff and the local community to lead the change – and do all of this instead of creating waste.
Marion’s Own Sustainability Interest
Marion’s own journey with sustainability has grown over the years into a passion. When she first moved to Australia and started the road trip, she started to become more aware about plastic pollution, and the issue about waste in our world.
Travelling helped Marion gain insights into sustainability, and how we can be trying to gain value from what we call ‘waste’, instead of throwing everything away. She did a lot of reading into the topic, digging deep into what innovations are out there, how those innovations could work in Australia, learning about why composting is so important and meeting people in the space.
Realising that there are two types of composting, and commercially compostable things don’t decompose in landfill was a big trigger for her to go down this journey. There are a lot of misconceptions in the community, people are led to believe that if a package says compostable on it, that it decomposes in landfill – but this is simply not true. Read more here in a blog post Marion wrote on her website.
Items that are commercially compostable can only break down in a specialised facility – and only if we have this facility locally, and if we deliver the take away cup to it. Unless the commercially compostable cup is being collected and taken to a facility – it will go in the normal garbage bin, and sit in landfill and not decompose. These cannot be recycled, or put in the yellow bin, as they are contaminating the recycling stream.
Something that is home compostable, on the other hand, can be home composted by anyone at home – or in the fogo bins.
Marion and Alexis want to inspire people to compost at home and be able to process their own packaging waste right there and then in their own backyard. As opposed to packaging being made from plastic, and having to go to landfill, and even as opposed to going into the recycling stream and having to be made into something else – the easiest and best way to process it is to compost it at home.
The compost you get from composting will help to grow food – either for ourselves or in our community. If we have no use for our own compost after using the compost bin to break down our waste, we can share it with a local community garden or put it on Share Waste – someone local would love it!
Working With Responsible Cafes
Marion is also the general manager at Responsible Cafes, which is an accreditation website for Australian cafes and their sustainability, and a rating system for cafes to highlight the good things they are doing in the sustainability space.
Working at both places is so interlinked for Marion, as when she visits cafes, she can incorporate the knowledge about reusables and sustainability from Responsible Cafes, and build relationships with cafes for using that site as well.
It is so complementary to both engage in reuse and composting and Marion is an advocate for both of these on her journey.
She helps cafes empower their staff, teach others about sustainability and learn how to significantly reduce the amount of waste that goes to landfill. She encourages them to carefully consider everything they do, in terms of everything that comes in – so that there is as little as possible that goes out, in terms of waste.
In part 2 of her interview, we will go through composting and how wonderful it is. In part 3, we talk about her work with Responsible Cafes – so stay tuned!
