Haciendo Nuestros Bastoncillos Ecológicos de Oídos
How it all started
You’ve probably already seen that famous picture by photographer Justin Hofman of the seahorse grabbed on to a plastic cotton swab stick. What you probably didn’t know is that that same picture was taken in Indonesia.
As the photographer explained in a recent interview “This image was a perfect combination of our experiences in Indonesia {…} Amazing wildlife, but terrible pollution.”
The reality is that when I (Diego) walk my dog ‘Chili’ on the beach, we come across a pretty astonishing number of plastic swab sticks. They’re easily recognizable because they look like blue, pink or white mini plastic straws, and as you can imagine, I have a ‘plastic waste radar’ built in my brain by now.
Seeing these small harmful sticks made us think that there had to be an alternative. We looked everywhere for them, in Bali, in Indonesia, in South East Asia, and nothing. We couldn’t find a single producer that actually made them. Luckily, the same person we spoke with about our bamboo toothbrushes was able to also provide us with the best bamboo cotton swabs in the market, and like with the bamboo toothbrushes, gave us much more information and transparency than we ever hoped for.
How are our Bamboo Cotton Swabs made.
If you’ve read any of the rest of the product “how-to’s” you probably already know the first step is always where to find the bamboo. The bamboo we use for our bamboo cotton swabs is Moso Bamboo, a species of giant bamboo that comes from China. Although bamboo is not considered wood, we still managed to source our Moso bamboo from sustainable sources that are FSC certified (Forest Stewardship Council).
El algodón que usamos es cultivado orgánicamente, y aunque no es algodón hecho para textiles per se, proviene de la misma fuente de textiles certificados GOTS (Global Organic Textile Standard).
El proceso de hacer un bastoncillo de oídos es muy similar al de hacer palillos de dientes. Un solo tallo de Moso Bamboo puede hacer miles de palitos, que luego se envuelven en las puntas con algodón orgánico. Todo el proceso no es realmente artesanal, pero se realiza con los más altos estándares de calidad y seguridad.
Nuestros bastoncillos de oídos son 100% biodegradables, por lo que después de usarlos, puedes tirarlos al contenedor de compost, donde se degradarán en cuestión de semanas. También tienen certificación FSC, FDA, CE y GOTS, por lo que puedes estar seguro de que son de la mejor calidad posible.
