So, 2020 is here.

It’s Jan.7… are you already sick of hearing all the hype about how it’s going to be such a great year and blah blah blah? I will admit, there is something about the pure association of seeing 2020 that has caused me to reflect more than ever on EVERYTHING than I have in the past. Not that this happens to me, but getting older may help with this as well – ha!

Let me introduce myself. I’m Christine Reyes, founder and owner of Refresh Packaging. That isn’t where my story begins. I’ve been working in the Digital Marketing realm for close to 22 years. After learning and growing a ton from all the incredible people and clients I’ve worked with over the years, I felt it was time to branch out and bring to life my own vision of what the perfect agency looks like. That journey brought about Refresh Marketing, which has continued to grow and change and evolve into something completely unexpected. But there have been road signs among these adventures, and a destination that my heart and head just had to explore.

So here we are. Refresh Packaging has been born and is new to Canada right on the cusp of major change. But I am not going to spend my time in this article trying to sell you on how great Refresh Packaging is. I’m not going to do what my marketing instinct is telling me – which is to sell my product. Instead, I have important articles to lay out in the next few months, to shed some light on, and share the incredible things I have learned that have been the core reason for Refresh Packaging’s creation. I hope in the pursuit of knowledge and facts, that I will also learn more about how we as businesses and ultimately as a society can grow this necessary change.

You see, as businesses utilizing strong promotion, we have ultimate power. We are the influencers and driving force in shaping culture in the world today. Some would argue that the consumer has ultimate power, but with great marketing, we are the ones that can guide consumers into deciding what they want, reinforcing decisions that fall in favour of your business. Is it not time to take that power and do something good with it?

Currently, business goals for the next year are being discussed, budgets set and strategies developed. This is the time of year where businesses set their objectives. For retailers in particular, there is also a big impending change coming from the federal government which will affect businesses directly, mandating the ban of single-use plastics which is looking to be in effect Jan. 2021. Now is the time businesses throughout Canada need to make additions to their agendas on how they’re going to meet this requirement; not in October or December 2020.

Of course, for me, the solution is a no brainer. Switching to compostable plastic alternatives is simple and honestly, the best solution to manage this coming change while still giving consumers a convenient way to take their goods home. The icing on the cake is, it helps consumers divert organic waste from landfills by reusing these new compostable bags as food scrap collection and sending these bags where they belong, as they turn into the best soil fertilizer available, all while eliminating the plastics problem. And that doesn’t even mention the reduction in harmful greenhouse gas emissions by eliminating organic waste in landfills. We’ll touch more on that later.

(I promise, that was my only quick little sales pitch… but all completely true)

Honestly, we have never lived in a better time. We have never had a more abundant situation, and especially in countries like Canada and the United States, we have never in history had a higher quality of life. We also have never had more to lose than we do now. We have come to expect our lifestyles as the norm. We are also living in a time of incredible innovation. Never has there been more tools and technology to solve problems and develop alternatives. But with change always comes resistance. My goal over the next few articles is to help inspire companies to not fight change because they are avoiding having to adjust the way business is done. I want to help ignite fire to look for alternative methods and not get trapped in the illusion that the way things have been done is the only way and the best way.

There is tremendous movement in the media about the environment, health, sustainability and even conspiracy. Ok, in all fairness, people love conspiracies, makes life seem a little more exciting. With that being said, Netflix is riddled with documentaries like “Rotten”, “Cowspiracy” and “What the Health” that are telling stories from a different perspective. Unfortunately, big corporations are taking a pretty big hit as a result of being cast as the villains in these stories. But it doesn’t have to be this way. The whole reason why Refresh Packaging exists is to help businesses grow and change and still do business the best way they can.

So, stay tuned. There is far too much to share and learn from just one article. My primary focus and commitment for these articles and Refresh Packaging’s LinkedIn profile are to bring you facts to the best of my knowledge and understanding, to help bring together all the information that is helpful to you as a business when it comes to making some changes over the next year. And last but not least, to sift through and filter out the inaccurate information.

Composting has been around since the world was formed and humans leveraging the benefits of composting can be dated back thousands of years. So it’s interesting that the average person knows so little about it, not to mention why it’s so crucial now more than ever. Some posts and articles will be written both by us and outside sources, as we promise to share and connect as many people as we can with great information. With that being said…. Here We Grow!