Do you lose your hair ties as much as I do? I swear I DO NOT KNOW WHERE THEY GO. It’s like I’m always playing hide and go seek with them. At one point, my husbands hair was long enough where he also needed hair ties and we could NEVER find them. Survival of the fittest hair tie edition.
I digress.
Since it’s plastic free July, I am featuring a ton of plastic alternative on the blog and I stumbled upon these biodegradable hair ties I wanted to share with y’all: TERRATIES!
And before I jump into the interview with the owner of Terraties, I just want to say that I tried them out for about a month and they are so DURABLE. They haven’t snapped. And they are SO STRONG. I am a huge fan and won’t be going back to plastic ones! Okay let’s jump in to this interview with the owner + creator of Terraties, Jamie Sherwood.
BYOK: Hi Jamie. Thanks for letting me interview you. Let’s start by hearing a little bit more about you!
Jamie: I’m originally from Santa Barbara, CA, and am now based in Minneapolis, MN, where I’ve been living since I attended school at the University of Minnesota. My background is in consumer products, with an emphasis on products that promote health and wellness. Fun fact: although I started a hair tie company, my hair is too short to use hair ties (though I do wear them on my wrist)!
BYOK: How funny! I love that fun fact! What was the inspiration for Terra Ties?
Jamie: About a year ago, I started noticing hair ties on the ground everywhere I went. On the sidewalk, in the grass at parks, on the ground outside my gym. Even floating in lakes and the ocean. Once I started noticing them, I would see at least one almost every day, and it made me think about how many hundreds of millions of people around the world use hair ties and how often people lose them. The amount of hair ties that are lost or thrown away around the world each year is likely in the billions! I honestly wasn’t sure what most hair ties were made of, so I did some research, and was saddened to find out that almost all are made of synthetic rubber and polyester: two materials that involve plastics and take thousands of years to biodegrade, or don’t biodegrade at all. This made me want to create a hair tie that’s made of natural, plant-based materials that are biodegradable, so that in the inevitable case that hair ties are lost or thrown away, they won’t sit there for thousands of years, harming our environment.
BYOK: What makes the hair ties eco friendly?
Jamie: Instead of being made of synthetic rubber and polyester, Terra Ties are made of natural rubber and organic cotton. Synthetic rubber is made with petroleum products, the production of which causes pollution and is harmful to the environment. In contrast, the natural rubber we used is derived purely from the byproducts of the Hevea brasiliensis tree, which is commonly known as the rubber tree. The cotton we use is grown organically, which means it is grown without the use of toxic pesticides. Because these materials are 100% plant-based, they are fully biodegradable, so if you lose or throw away your hair tie, it will break down instead of polluting the environment for thousands of years.
BYOK: Let’s chat packaging. What makes the packaging eco friendly?Jamie: Our packaging is plastic-free and made from 100% recycled materials. So many products have an excessive amount of extra packaging, so we want to make ours as simple as possible: there’s nothing to unwrap or discard. The hair ties come wrapped around the packaging, so the packaging itself serves as a place to store your hair ties, and once you’re done with it, you can toss it in the recycling bin, and it will begin it’s life cycle again.
BYOK: Do you plan on expanding on this brand? Jamie: Our company is pretty new still, so we’re focused on growing Terra Ties right now, but we definitely plan on expanding into other eco-friendly hair, beauty, and fashion products in the future. The majority of products in these industries involve plastics and synthetic materials, and we’d love to do our part to help reduce the impact that the hair, beauty, and fashion products have on the environment by giving people environmentally friendly alternatives to the products they use every day to look good and feel good.
BYOK: What else should we know about Terraties? Jamie: We make Terra Ties a little bit thicker than standard hair ties to make them sturdier, and the organic cotton we use makes them much softer to the touch than standard hair ties, so they’re more comfortable to wear around your wrist. Terra Ties are great for people of all genders and ages!
You can purchase Terraties here on AMAZON. You can also follow Terraties on Instagram + website.
