Biodegradability is a powerful concept, but it’s often misunderstood. At Wailoo, we embrace biodegradability where appropriate, pairing it with lifecycle thinking to ensure products truly reduce environmental impact from production to end of life. By prioritizing materials designed to break down naturally, we help customers make choices that align with a healthier planet.
Environmental impact of plastic phone cases
Billions of phone cases are produced annually, and a large fraction ends up as waste due to short lifespans and recyclability challenges. There’s a low recycling rate for plastic films and many hard plastics; many phone-case materials are blends that are difficult to recycle. The composition of many phone-case materials—blends of plastics and coatings—further complicates end-of-life processing, since multi-material products are not easily sorted or recycled through standard municipal streams (Ellen MacArthur Foundation and EU circular economy resources; EPA packaging material guidance).
Approximately 300 million tons hard plastic is produced; and it is estimated that about 8 million tons enter the oceans each year, a figure that underscores the scale of plastic pollution and the downstream challenges of waste management. (UNEP and related syntheses; Jambeck et al., Science, 2015). This leads to released microplastics into the environment as well as fossil fuel use in production.
The lifespan of a typical phone-case life is 1–2 years. That means that each phone-case user on the planet uses dozens of phone cases in their lifetime, contributing to billions of wasted phone cases globally. While precise production counts for phone cases alone are not universally published, the volume is evidently in the billions, reflecting the large-scale nature of the global smartphone ecosystem and its accessories.
Our philosophy
Here at Wailoo, we care so much about the environment that we refuse to contribute to this plastic waste by using Print-on-Demand (POD). By producing items only when customers place orders, we drastically reduce overproduction and cut waste.
Our phone cases are made from PBAT and PLA plant polymer and bamboo fibers and are naturally biodegradable 160 days after disposal.
Check out our plastic free phone cases today.
Sources:
UNEP, Ellen MacArthur Foundation, OECD, and EPA