100% Healthy Snacks - You, Me, Planet

I am Ellen Burns, a 29 year old Ballarat-based entrepreneur and I hope to lead the way to a better snack food industry.

I want to tell you about my new We Bar None snack bars that come in a range of extremely popular flavours, are healthy, allergy-friendly and planet healthy too. Our wholefoods snack bars are not only delicious, but they are gluten-free, vegan and paleo.

So you simply have to try them and see if you like them. One thing I am sure you will like about them is that I recently became the first Victorian business owner to use 100% Certified home compostable packaging on my energy bars.

100% Certified home compostable packaging

This means that when the snack is finished the wrapper can be thrown in the compost or buried in the garden, safely degrading in a matter of weeks.

THE WRAPPERS ARE MADE FROM SUSTAINABLE PLANT FIBRES AND PROMISE TO BE THE NEXT BIG THING IN THE WAR ON WASTE. IN AN INDUSTRY THAT RELIES ON PACKAGING TO KEEP FOOD FRESH AND PORTABLE, I WANT TO PROVE HOW EASY IT IS FOR CONVENIENCE FOODS TO NOT INCONVENIENCE THE PLANET.

I am also on a mission to make my business completely plastic free. Reducing waste has always been very important to me, but a waste-free lifestyle didn’t seem to match up with being a business owner.

Since starting the business in 2015, I have grown increasingly uncomfortable with the waste that I create. Even though my packaging was recyclable, it was still confronting to receive the boxes of plastic pouches, knowing that I was responsible for putting that out into the world. We’ve been shown recently how unreliable recycling really is.

Where I found the packaging and what it means

I started searching for alternatives over a year ago, but completely home compostable wrappers have only recently become available. After a lot of searching, I managed to find PA Packaging, who are currently the only supplier of this packaging in the whole country. The demand just hasn’t been there and the technology has been catching up. We’re living in a time where people are finally starting to really think about their impact on the planet.

Biodegradable packaging can be an ethical minefield. Biodegradable plastics actually break down to micro-plastic, making them even worse than standard plastic. Compostable packaging can only be processed by industrial facilities, which is not a system we’re really set up for yet. With home compostable packaging, we can take responsibility at a personal level and prevent it from ever entering the waste stream.



We Bar None wrappers can be put into home compost bins or buried in the ground, certified to safely degrade in a maximum of 26 weeks. My home tests has shown no sign of them after as little as 13 weeks.

They have also been tested and confirmed to break down safely in sea water, which means that if they somehow end up in the waterways they won’t be eaten by marine life or clogging up the ocean. With over 100 million marine animals estimated to be killed by plastic debris each year, we need to be doing all we can to cut down on our plastic waste.

Desire for ethics and need for convenience 

Despite the increased knowledge around waste and how it is affecting our planet, consumers are still torn between their desire for ethics and need for convenience.

THE TIDE IS CHANGING ON HOW PEOPLE VIEW PLASTIC, AND DEMAND IS INCREASING FOR ETHICAL PRODUCTS, BUT PEOPLE DON’T WANT TO SACRIFICE CONVENIENCE. 

There are things that people don’t want to give up. We live busy, mobile lives, and packaging is necessary. I want to prove that you don’t have to compromise, you can have ethical convenience.

I really hope that other businesses will follow suit and that we could soon have a world free from single-use plastic. Packaging is vital; not only in the food industry but in other fields like medicine and science. It’s really important that we have viable plant-based replacements. The technology is there now. We finally have an alternative.

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