We are a female-founded business that makes compostable and sustainable tableware from plants. Our mission is to create alternatives to the single-use plastics that pollute our planet and our food systems. By addressing the plastic problem, we’re offering manageable, everyday actions to help address climate change.  

Repurpose is turning the overlooked, wasteful items of everyday life—disposable paper and plastic, trash bags—and turning them into sustainable essentials. Developed for a circular economy, we use plant-based bioplastics, renewable materials, and great design as our primary tools to help you lower your carbon footprint.

Innovation is a constant for us. We’re committed to using and finding the newest green technologies to create the very best products possible at affordable prices. 

In addition to expanding our product line to offer sustainable solutions to your daily household products, our priorities are to minimize the impact of the shipping and packaging of our products.

Our certifications come from industry leading third-party organizations that put our products through rigorous testing to ensure they meet all standards that we claim they do.

Our products have a lower carbon footprint than comparable non-compostable products. Using renewable ingredients like corn, upcycled wood pulp, and sugar cane, these upcycled materials leftover from manufacturing would otherwise go to waste. 

We process materials with methods that release fewer greenhouse gases and toxic chemicals into the environment than conventional plastic and paper. 

Our composted products can also be used to help fertilize crops for future use, creating a closed-loop sustainability system. In fact, our PLA-based products emit 80% less CO2 into the atmosphere and use 52% less energy to produce than plastics. Our compostable plates and bowls use 66% less energy to produce than paper plates and bowls. 

Compostable products help divert organic waste from landfills, which in turn decreases methane emissions from landfills. Composted products can be used to help grow the plant-based materials used to make future products. This is circular sustainability.

Our compostable products are made from 4 main materials: Molded Fiber, PLA, PBAT, and Bamboo. Compared to traditionally-used counterparts, the renewable, plant-based materials used to make our products are not only of excellent quality, but are sustainably sourced and better for you and the planet.

We work to ensure that common allergens like wheat and soy are not included in our products.  By relying on plants like corn, sugarcane, wood scrap, and eucalyptus, we aim to provide an allergy-free solution. We are currently pursuing testing and certifications to have a third party guarantee that our products are gluten, soy, and allergen free!

Our compostable products are safe for you and better for the planet, which in our minds, is the ultimate safety consideration. They are free from BPA, BPS, Phthalate, PVC, Chlorine, and other common hormone disrupting chemicals that are hard to pronounce. Learn more about these acronyms on our blog.

As of Feb 1, 2021, Repurpose factories are 100% PFAS-free. We're proud to be the first tableware brand to address, eliminate, and replace PFAS in our products. Learn more about the effects of PFAS on our blog.

We are not taking any food-grade sweet corn out of the food supply. Our corn-based materials are made from non-food-grade corn grown specifically for plant-based plastic replacements and biofuels.

The stream of corn used to make PLA products is comprised of a combination of GMO and non-GMO corn. While we do not control this stream, we are aware of concerns surrounding GMO products and are always working to identify opportunities to minimize the amount of GMO materials in our products and work with our upstream suppliers to minimize agricultural impacts of bioplastics.

Our products are designed in and shipped from LA!

Our products are currently manufactured in the United States and overseas in China and Taiwan. We are currently formulating a cost-effective strategy to shift manufacturing to the US.

Yes! While our compostable products are made for single-use, they can be washed by hand and used more than once before they are disposed of.

Our compostable plates and bowls are microwave-safe and will not leach any toxic chemicals with temperature changes. 

However, not all of our compostable product materials are designed for high heat settings. We recommend microwaving your foods and beverages in other microwave-safe containers and transferring to our compostable products after heating.

No, our products will not breakdown if they are stored for long periods of time. Our compostable products require a specific set of conditions to begin the composting process.

Our compostable products are non-toxic and made from renewable resources, enabling it to break down in a commercial composting facility within 3-6 months. Through Repurpose, you help contribute to creating nutrient-dense soil that helps future plants, and a circular economy, flourish.

Our compostable products are compostable in commercial composting facilities. They are ASTM D6400 and D6868 Certified ensuring that they break down into natural elements so that they are not visually distinguishable within 90 days and leave no toxic residue behind.  

Most people think these words are interchangeable, but there’s an important distinction to be made.

Biodegradable simply means that disintegration will occur, without specifying an amount of time or what the end material may be. Technically, any material is biodegradable overtime and depends on the environment. Companies often use the term “biodegradable” to mislead consumers. It is illegal in the state of California to label a product as biodegradable without being substantiated by third-party testing.

Compostable materials must degrade at a certain rate into a nutrient-rich substance to be qualified. We consider “compostable” to be a legitimate way to measure and represent a product’s end-of-life impact on the environment. 

Our compostable products are certified as compostable, not just biodegradable.

We focus on packaging that is made from highly recyclable materials. Compostable products are well-designed for products that come in contact with food, such as our products themselves, but since our packaging will not be contaminated by food, recycling is a much more appropriate end-of-life option for our packaging.

The available packaging made from compostable materials does not perform well enough to ensure your products make it home clean and safe.

We are committed to continuing our work innovating cost-effective compostable packaging that’s up to our performance standards. We hope to make all our packaging compostable soon.

Our Marine Degradable PHA straws and waste bags are backyard compostable and achieve degradation within 12 months at an ambient temperature. Other products in our tableware are on track to be. We recommend that our products be composted in an industrial/commercial compost facility to ensure that they fully break down in a reasonable timeframe. 

Contact your local waste management service to see if your city has a curbside composting program. Find more information on how to properly compost our products at the following links.

Industrial composting sites across the nation:

https://compostingcouncil.org/participants/

Independent businesses that specialize in compost pick-up:

https://compostnow.org/compost-services/

Find a composter near you: https://findacomposter.com/

When it is time to dispose of your product, we recommend they be sent to a commercial composting facility due to optimized breakdown conditions not typically found in one's home compost bin.

No, food-soiled items cannot be recycled, and that's why our products are best suited for composting. 

In theory, our PLA based compostable products could be recycled and remade into new products. However, there isn’t currently enough demand for recycled PLA products, so our current waste systems will typically sort them into landfill waste if recycled.

We do understand that our products may end up in a landfill if composting is not available. The truth is, methane is a natural byproduct of microbial decomposition of any organic material in a landfill under anaerobic conditions. This is why we are proponents of the benefits of compostable tableware as a primary driver in food waste diversion from landfills. Simply put, compostable products are helping food waste be diverted from landfills to composting, avoiding the methane emission that would have been generated if the food waste was disposed of in a landfill.

Even if our products end up in a landfill, there are upstream benefits associated with our products which are made from renewable plant-based sources compared to virgin fossil-fuel derived plastics.

It is very important to dispose of any and all products in a responsible manner to make sure they do not reach waterways. When foreign material ends up in bodies of water, marine habitats are disrupted and wildlife is harmed.

However, our compostable Marine Degradable PHA straws are certified biodegradable in soil, freshwater, and marine environments, keeping our ocean friends safe.

We offer free shipping for all subscription orders and/or orders over $50.

Below that threshold, our shipping rates are calculated at checkout and are current with our carrier offerings. Orders shipping to Hawaii and Alaska are subject to increased shipping costs. You’ll see them in the checkout process before you complete your order.

All orders are packed with care and shipped from our California facility. You'll receive your order within 7-10 business days from the order date. Once your order ships we'll send over an email confirmation with tracking.

Shipping is only available within the United States. We’re hoping to expand to international destinations in the future.

*Due to current carrier rates Alaska and Hawaii are subject to higher shipping costs.

We want you to love your order! If you’re not completely satisfied for any reason, we’re happy to accept returns within 30 days from the delivery date for a full refund, minus any return shipping costs. To get a return started, please send us an email at help@repurpose.com and we’ll take it from there.

If you receive a damaged item, please reach out to us as help@repurpose.com and we will help you resolve the problem right away. We want you to love your Repurpose products.

It can take up to one billing cycle for the funds to appear back in your account, on rare occasions up to 3-4 weeks. The timing can vary depending on the payment method used. We recommend reaching out to your issuing bank directly with any questions.

We stand by the quality of our products. Should something happen during normal use please reach out to help@repurpose.com so we can make this right for you!

We get it, it happens! If you need to make an update to your order just send us an email at help@repurpose.com and we will get it straightened out for you.

We accept all major credit cards, PayPal, and Apple Pay. 

You can send us an email at help@repurpose.com and we’ll do our best to respond as quickly as possible!

We are planning to launch a customer facing wholesale and bulk pricing site. In the meantime, for inquiries related to wholesale or bulk pricing, send us a note at wholesale@repurpose.com

Please reach out to us at marketing@repurpose.com with all press inquiries.