Here's the short answer, right up front: a lot of "plastic-free" packaging on shelves right now isn't actually as recyclable as the label wants you to believe. Those glossy, high-shine cardboard boxes everybody loves to photograph for the unboxing video? Most of them are laminated or coated to get that finish, and that coating is very often what keeps them out of the recycling stream entirely. No plastic in the box doesn't mean the box is doing what you think it's doing once it leaves your hands. It's one of the most common misunderstandings in the whole "eco" packaging conversation, and honestly, it's about time somebody just said it plainly.
I've spent a long time now building this company from a basement apartment in Edmonton to wherever this thing is going next, and if there's one thing that gets under my skin, it's watching a genuinely good idea — package less plastic, waste less planet — get quietly hollowed out by marketing until it means almost nothing. Not out of malice, usually. Just out of nobody asking the follow-up question. "Is this recyclable?" is not the same question as "is this actually getting recycled, in practice, by the facility your city actually uses?" Those two questions have very different answers a shocking amount of the time.
So what's actually wrong with high-gloss boxes?
That satisfying high-gloss finish on a lot of premium-feeling cardboard packaging comes from a laminate coating, or a plastic-based gloss varnish, layered right onto the fiber. It looks clean. It photographs beautifully. It also means the paper fibers underneath can't be pulped and reprocessed the normal way, because the coating either contaminates the pulping process or just doesn't separate out at all. So the box gets tossed in the blue bin with the best of intentions, and depending on your local facility, it either gets screened out and landfilled anyway, or it degrades the quality of an entire batch of recycled paper for everyone else in the bin with it. Not a great trade for something that was marketed to you as the responsible choice.
This is the gap nobody really likes to talk about: plastic-free and recyclable are not interchangeable words, even though packaging design treats them that way constantly. You can have packaging with zero plastic in the ingredient list and still have packaging a recycling facility can't actually do anything with. That's not a technicality. That's the whole ballgame.
What we actually do instead
We use plain, unfinished kraft paper. Everywhere. Labels, boxes, wraps — all of it. No gloss, no laminate, no shiny coating trying to convince you it's premium. It looks like what it is: paper. And that's on purpose, because that plain, uncoated kraft paper is sourced from recycled material to begin with, and — this is the important part — it's fully recyclable again after you're done with it. Not recyclable-with-an-asterisk. Not recyclable-if-your-city-has-the-right-facility. Just recyclable, the whole ordinary way paper is supposed to work.
The rest of our packaging follows the same rule, because we don't believe in doing it right in one place and cutting corners everywhere else. Glass bottles and aluminum tins round out the lineup, and both of those happen to be two of the most genuinely valuable materials in the entire recycling economy — the kind of materials facilities actually want back, because they can be reprocessed again and again without losing quality. That's a very different story from a coated box quietly heading for the landfill with a green leaf printed on the front of it.
Is unfinished kraft paper going to win any design awards for glossy shelf appeal? Probably not! It's not trying to. It's trying to actually be what it says it is, which turns out to be a surprisingly rare thing to ask of packaging these days.
Where this shows up in what we make
Every product that leaves here, from a bar of soap to a stick of deodorant, travels in packaging built on that same logic — plastic-free, and genuinely, functionally recyclable, not just recyclable in theory. Our Australian Bush Walk, Mountain Trip, Oak Barrel Cider, and Viet Cafe Vibes soap bars all wrap in that plain kraft paper. Our Fresh Woody and Citrus Spice deodorant sticks skip plastic entirely in the format itself. Our shampoo and conditioner bars — Normal & All Hair Types, Dry or Damaged, Oily or Scalp-Sensitive, and Thinning & Weak Hair, alongside their matching conditioner bars — do the same. Even the little things, like our linen soap saver bag, are built from natural fiber meant to be used for years, not one unboxing and gone.
If you're building out a full routine at once, our Trial Bundle or the longer 3-Month, 6-Month, and 1-Year Personal Care Essentials kits carry the same packaging philosophy across every single item inside them. One stop, no exceptions, no glossy box hiding in the middle of it pretending it's something it's not.
Why this matters more than it might seem to
We're not interested in scaring anyone into caring about packaging. The world's got enough doom in it already, and fear is a lousy long-term motivator anyway — it burns hot and then it just burns people out. What actually works, what actually compounds into something real, is people making slightly better choices today than they did yesterday, and companies being straight about what those choices actually accomplish. That's the whole idea behind this brand, really. Not guilt. Just honesty, and then showing up and doing the unglamorous, uncoated, plain-paper version of the right thing, over and over, until it adds up to something.
So no, we don't do the glossy box. We never will. It's a small thing in a big world of packaging decisions, but small things, done honestly, are sort of the whole point out here on the open road.
FAQ
Is all cardboard packaging bad for recycling?
No — plain, uncoated cardboard and kraft paper recycle just fine through standard municipal systems. The issue is specifically with high-gloss, laminated, or heavily coated finishes, which are harder or sometimes impossible for facilities to process.
How can I tell if packaging is actually recyclable, not just "plastic-free"?
Look at the finish. A glossy, shiny, or coated surface is a red flag, even on paper-based packaging. Plain, matte, uncoated paper or cardboard is a much safer bet, along with glass and aluminum, which recycling facilities actively want back.
Are glass and aluminum really better than paper packaging?
They're some of the most valuable materials in the recycling stream — both can be reprocessed repeatedly without much loss in quality, which is part of why we use glass bottles and aluminum tins alongside our kraft paper packaging.
Does Open Roads Body Co. use any plastic in packaging at all?
No. All of our packaging — labels, wraps, boxes, bottles, and tins — is plastic-free and built to be either fully recyclable or naturally decomposable.
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