SARASOTA COUNTY - Run your fingertips along the exteriors of Joy Harding’s Earth Balance Bags and it feels like a high-end glossy magazine cover. Touch the inside and the velvety texture evokes coated paper, the kind that might make a decent photo printout.
Joy Harding, owner of Earth Balance Bag Company, has created tree-free gift and wine bags that are made from pulverized limestone.
This is what sedimentary rock feels like when it is processed into a “tree-free paper bag.” But from a distance, you would never be able to distinguish it from any number of colorful gift/wine bag competitors made from traditional paper. And in the visual-only age of Internet marketing, the lack of hands-on comparison shopping could test Harding’s efforts to save forests.
But the New York native who has spent the last 15 years in retail packaging is confident she is on the front end of an idea whose time has come.
“Nobody needs a gift bag,” says Harding from her five-acre ranch home near Myakka City. “But the fact of the matter is, they are being sold and people do buy them. And this is a much greener process than plastic or paper.”
Earth Balance Bags are made from limestone, composed largely of skeletal residue from marine organisms. The sediment is pulverized into powder and mixed with high-density polyethylene binding to produce what feels like a thick cut of paper.
That plastic binding means limestone paper is not biodegradable. “So it’s not perfect,” Harding says. But for each ton produced, she says, 20 trees are spared, 167 pounds of solid waste are kept out of the ground, and 236 pounds of emissions do not billow into the atmosphere. Furthermore, her bags are strong enough for extended use, and recyclable as plastics.
Among some environmentalists, the relatively new stone paper is a curiosity raising lots of questions.
Susan Kinsella, executive director of the advocacy group Conservatree in San Francisco, applauds tree-free innovations, but says biodegradability is a legitimate issue. “We are particularly concerned about alternatives that don’t go full circle,” says Kinsella.
Neva Murtha monitors the latest in green-paper solutions for the nonprofit group Canopy in Vancouver. Canopy has a list of 350 recommended North American companies responding to increasing demand for alternative paper products, primarily “agricultural residue” like wheat straw. Stone paper is not there yet.
“I’d like to see a complete life cycle analysis,” says Murtha, who became aware of stone paper less than two years ago.
“We support products that leave a smaller environmental footprint than paper leaves on forests, but we also need to make sure we’re not putting problems in other people’s backyards.”
For Harding, the tree-saving capacity of limestone bags alone assures its viability.
She orders her finished products from Taiwan, where the processing patent is held. Asia’s influence on Harding — who has traveled extensively in the East — asserts itself in the Buddha heads and the bamboo stands outside her rural home, which adjoins pasture land for horses and cattle.
“I’m not a Buddhist,” says Harding, who switched to a vegan diet last year, “but I’m a major believer in karma, that what you put out you get back.”
She read about limestone paper in 2008 and began unveiling her lineup at trade shows early last year. With traditional paper wine bags ranging from $1.99 to $4.99 and up, Harding decided to lower her margins by settling on a competitive $2.99.
Among the first to jump on the idea was Libby Engel, gift shop director of Crowder’s in Bradenton.
“There are some killer gift bags out there, but this is really unique,” says Engel. “The price is right, they look good, they feel good. Green is going to be more and more important for the consumer.
“But I will tell you this. You’ve got to sell the story to the customer. I mean, literally, you have to tell them about it. Because it isn’t special until you tell the story. Then they’ll sell themselves.”
So far, Earth Balance Bags have been approved by the likes of Whole Foods in northern California. At Allan Vayle Enterprises, a gift retailer in Billerica, Mass., owner Julie Mizzoni began stocking Harding’s wares after a trade show encounter in January.
“I was really expecting it to be grainy, and I was surprised at how thick it was,” she says. “What I really like about it is that it’s waterproof and durable. It’ll last a lot longer than paper.”
Susan Kinsella, executive director of the advocacy group Conservatree in San Francisco, applauds tree-free innovations, but says biodegradability is a legitimate issue. “We are particularly concerned about alternatives that don’t go full circle,” says Kinsella.
Neva Murtha monitors the latest in green-paper solutions for the nonprofit group Canopy in Vancouver. Canopy has a list of 350 recommended North American companies responding to increasing demand for alternative paper products, primarily “agricultural residue” like wheat straw. Stone paper is not there yet.
“I’d like to see a complete life cycle analysis,” says Murtha, who became aware of stone paper less than two years ago.
“We support products that leave a smaller environmental footprint than paper leaves on forests, but we also need to make sure we’re not putting problems in other people’s backyards.”
For Harding, the tree-saving capacity of limestone bags alone assures its viability.
She orders her finished products from Taiwan, where the processing patent is held. Asia’s influence on Harding — who has traveled extensively in the East — asserts itself in the Buddha heads and the bamboo stands outside her rural home, which adjoins pasture land for horses and cattle.
“I’m not a Buddhist,” says Harding, who switched to a vegan diet last year, “but I’m a major believer in karma, that what you put out you get back.”
She read about limestone paper in 2008 and began unveiling her lineup at trade shows early last year. With traditional paper wine bags ranging from $1.99 to $4.99 and up, Harding decided to lower her margins by settling on a competitive $2.99.
Among the first to jump on the idea was Libby Engel, gift shop director of Crowder’s in Bradenton.
“There are some killer gift bags out there, but this is really unique,” says Engel. “The price is right, they look good, they feel good. Green is going to be more and more important for the consumer.
“But I will tell you this. You’ve got to sell the story to the customer. I mean, literally, you have to tell them about it. Because it isn’t special until you tell the story. Then they’ll sell themselves.”
So far, Earth Balance Bags have been approved by the likes of Whole Foods in northern California. At Allan Vayle Enterprises, a gift retailer in Billerica, Mass., owner Julie Mizzoni began stocking Harding’s wares after a trade show encounter in January.
“I was really expecting it to be grainy, and I was surprised at how thick it was,” she says. “What I really like about it is that it’s waterproof and durable. It’ll last a lot longer than paper.”
