Leaf Republic

A. The main facts about the activities of the company.

Leaf Republic is a German company created by Pedram Zolgardi, native of Iran he moved to Germany and he was inspired during an India trip, there he saw in the villages how many families had their meals on leaves, for Indians, leaf plates served at social gatherings, langars and poojas are not a new concept, so he thought it could be a good idea to export this idea to Germany.
Zolgardi decided to create a new start-up and start selling their pressed leaf packaging and serving ware to the public. Beginning from a vision to create completely sustainable and biodegradable outdoor tableware in response to plastic waste pollution caused by packaging, the company has spent a number of years prototyping their product until they came up with a disposable material fabricated entirely out of leaves.
Leaf Republic has now developed a whole series of packaging and tableware made using pressing machines to sandwich a middle layer of leaf paper between two layers of actual leaves (these are stitched together with palm leaf fibers). No plastics, adhesives, chemicals or additives of any kind are added to the product. The materials are pressed together in a custom made mould and the end product is both waterproof and durable, but also natural and biodegradable.
Besides from caring about the environment, the leaves used to produce their products are sourced from a wild creeper plant collected by villagers in Asia and South America. This helps to provide some opportunities for people in these local communities.

B. The Ethical challenges this company is addressing.

The big problem is that nowadays people are very used to consume plastic packages, packaging is a part of our daily lives. There has always been packaging and there always will be. As the number of people and their consumption keep on growing, the packaging market has an impressive size all over the world, so trying to convince people that changing what are used to it might be difficult. Trying to revolutionize this sector is a complicated task, people are concerned about the environment but not about having to pay higher prices for more sustainable packaging when they already have one which is much cheaper
Having an ethical and sustainable product is great, but being ethical in all the value chain is another issue, a lot of companies, multinational mainly, exploit the areas where they obtain their raw materials and they not only don’t enforce the communities they are operating with, they sometimes create sociopolitical conflicts among the area worsening the situation. Leaf republic wants to enforce the and build strong communities in the poor countries where they collect their leafs to create a stronger and prosperous communities around the company.

C. What makes you believe this company is really ethical and why you trust it?

If the company has one motto which defines what is trying to achieve would be, “Because we only spend a brief moment in this world”. They are very concerned that everything that we own is only temporary, so what really counts is what we create and build up, our actions and our decisions last forever. So they stand that if these actions lead to building up a sustainable, social, gainful company, then they will have the greatest job in the world.
We trust them because they are always trying to keep improving from one year to another, they spend more than three years doing research trying to find the best and ecological way to produce their products, looking for the way to do even more sustainable their products.

Their aim of revolution, of being different, they want to set a new standard change this world towards a better place where everyone has opportunities and we have respect for each other and respect for the home we share.

D.The possible challenges facing the company in the future and how you think this company may improve.

Producing this kind of products is really expensive, they are using all natural products that don’t contain any type of plastics, additives or glue, so in a future in order to increase their revenues maybe they could start using some kind of chemicals to making the production cheaper. Meaning that a relatively competitive price is one of the hardest goals they have upfront because even though people is conscious about the environmental problem we are facing they have to face other expenses and spending more money in biodegradable packaging may not be one of their preferences.
The success of this company is linked to the consciousness of people regarding the earth survival problem, so s many other companies that sell eco-friendly products they have to fight towards the low involvement of people into the problem, even though awareness and participation is increasing every year there’s a lot of work to be done and working and getting involved in ecological consciousness campaigns will not only improve their company ,as they will sell more products, but increase acknowledgement towards the problem and help companies that are trying to turn consumer’s preferences into a more sustainable one’s.
Another challenge they might be facing is that those big companies interested in maintaining the plastic packages fight against them.