My New Compostable Shipping Envelopes

I’m not surprised that I woke up early this morning thinking about my shipping envelopes.

For a while, I’ve been trying to find new envelopes to mail my potholders and wool in.  Something lighter than the padded ones I’ve been using which are all paper, but add unnecessary weight (which is an environmental concern) when shipping them.

When I tried to find a new kind of envelope a while back all I found were Tyvek envelopes which Dupont and claims are recyclable.  But the only way to recycle them is to send them back to Dupont.  Not something I can imagine anyone really doing.

But this time I found so many different options, I was having a hard time figuring out which would be best for me.

Most of the envelopes I found are made from recycled paper and are just a lightweight kind of cardboard which can be recycled with other kinds of paper or cardboard.  And even if they were to end up in a landfill, it’s not like dumping plastic.

But then I found a company called noIssue. who makes shipping envelopes that are corn-based and can be composted with your other organic matter.   They biodegrade in just six months. And even if people aren’t composting them in their backyards, they won’t add anything toxic to a landfill.

They do need to be stored in a cool dark place and  have a shelf life of 9 months, which all work fine for me.

So I ordered some and got an email saying they’d get to me on February 21st.

That’s when I started to look around for more envelopes that I could get quicker since I’m just about out of my padded ones.  And that’s why I couldn’t fall back to sleep this morning thinking about which envelopes to buy.

Then, this afternoon, I came into the house from my studio and sitting on the dining room table was a small box filled with my new compostable envelopes.

Tomorrow I’m planning on finishing up the batch of potholders I made last week and putting the ones I haven’t already sold up for sale in my Etsy Shop. And when I ship them out, they’ll go in my new environmentally friendly envelopes.

I can’t wait to use them.