Ever made a conscious effort to buy environmentally friendly products, only to find them land on your doorstep wrapped in layers of plastic?

For Great Wrap founders Jordy and Julia Kay, plastic wrap has always been part and parcel of their professions. Prior to going into business together, Jordy was a winemaker and Julia was an architect – and whether they were shipping cases of biodynamic wine overseas or sourcing sustainable timber, everything arrived encased in plastic.

“You start to think about it and multiply it by 10 and by 10 again and you realise that every day there are millions of pallets being wrapped up and sent around the world, and that's going to keep happening for the next few hundred years,” Jordy says.

This was a notion keeping both Jordy and Julia awake at night when they met at a Melbourne pub in 2019, immediately connecting over a shared interest in biomaterials and the environment.

“We thought if we could just change that one material… we could have an immediate and profound impact,” Julia says.

Their solution was Great Wrap, a compostable stretch wrap material made from food waste, including potato peel.

The couple founded the business in 2020, working with researchers from Monash University to design a system that converts starch from potato waste into polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs) – microbial biopolymers that can be used to make marine-degradable, compostable plastics.

Great Wrap performs like a standard plastic wrap, but it’s certified home compostable, which means it should break down in home compost in approximately 180 days.

“We've since worked with a number of universities and research institutions around the world, taking bits of technology and piecing them together,” Julia says.

“For us it’s important to introduce compostable products on a large scale because there are a lot of challenges with the recycling system.”

“We are human, we make errors, but [a compostable solution] means that even if it does fall out of the recycling loop, it’s still going to break down and it’s not going to last for 1,000 years.”

They started out manufacturing Great Wrap overseas, before securing a government grant and seed funding to establish a manufacturing facility at Tullamarine in Melbourne’s west. The next stage was taking Great Wrap beyond our kitchen drawers and into the commercial space.

In early 2023, Great Wrap launched a pallet wrap product aimed at businesses looking to reduce their reliance on single-use plastics.

“When we started, we’d go to businesses and have to beg them to have a conversation with us,” Jordy says. “Now, we get messages and emails every day from big businesses around the world.”

“There has been an incredible shift in people’s understanding of the problem,” Julia adds. “For some businesses, pallet wrap is the last remaining plastic in their supply chain, so they’re really excited that there’s a solution.”

Today, Great Wrap employs about 30 people and manufactures all products from its factory in Melbourne’s west, about a 90-minute drive from the couple’s home on the Mornington Peninsula.

It’s a lot of time spent on the road, but the couple say it’s worth it to be able to start every morning with a walk or swim at some of Victoria’s best beaches.

Our day with Jordy and Julia starts early with a walk along picturesque Diamond Bay – then its back to their house in Sorrento for a quick coffee before they hit the road in the all-electric EQC.

Both spacious and sporty, the mid-size SUV features all the latest technology and comfort features – from heated, electrically adjustable front seats and THERMATIC automatic climate control to ambient lighting in 64 colours. The EQC also comes with a powerful electric drivetrain that delivers approximately 300 kW of power and 760 Nm of torque. Full torque is instantly available upon acceleration, which smoothly propels the vehicle ahead.

“One of the things that immediately stood out [when we first drove the EQC] was the instant acceleration,” Julia says.

The EQC’s impressive indicative 430km^[1] electric-only range is more than enough to accommodate the couple’s busy schedule. And with a front electric drive machine specifically designed to minimise electricity consumption and optimise efficiency for the low to medium load range, the EQC was the perfect driving companion for their longer journeys, too.

When they did eventually stop to top up their range, Jordy and Julia thoroughly enjoyed the experience. Charging never took Jordy and Julia longer than approximately 40 minutes^[2], and even though they were able to do this from the comfort of their own home, the interactions they had at public charging stations were an unanticipated highlight.

“People approach me all the time and ask about it – there’s a really genuine curiosity about what it’s like to drive an electric vehicle. I’ve met so many more people than I would at a petrol station,” Julia says.

After a couple of calls in the car and a quick stop to grab some lunch at local café Three Blue Ducks, the couple spend the afternoon arranging meetings with investors, checking in on manufacturing or working with their communication and impact teams to spread the word.

“As a business, you can get so focussed on the mission that you don’t have time to reflect or track your progress,” Julia says. “It’s really important for us to share our journey and all these challenges really transparently with our consumers.”

They are currently working on plans to develop a biorefinery at Tullamarine so they can convert potato waste into PHAs on-site and localise the entire process, rather than importing biomaterials. And after that they hope to take Great Wrap global.

“Right now, we want to make all of the world’s pallet wrap from potato waste, but what does the future of packaging look like for all forms of soft plastics?” Jordy says. “We need to look at plastic the same way we look at carbon emissions… curbing them and bringing them down – we need to set serious targets.”

It’s a sentiment Mercedes-Benz shares; our innovative all-electric vehicle range, including the EQC, presents an opportunity to enter into a more sustainable lifestyle of electric mobility. As part of our sustainable business strategy, we aim to make our entire fleet of new vehicles net carbon-neutral along the entire value chain and over the vehicles' entire life cycle by 2039.

“We’re fortunate to be exposed to a lot of exciting innovation and I think we’re both optimistic… we’ll get to a point where we’ll all be driving electric cars and we’ll all be using compostable plastics in our supply chain,” Jordy says. “These things take time, but we’ll eventually get there.”

EVeryday is our new series offering a window into a day in the life of Australia and New Zealand’s changemakers. Stay tuned for more stories powered by electric intelligence.

Three Blue Ducks kindly supplied a meal to our contributors for the purposes of writing this article.

Discover the all-electric EQC.

By Jo Davy


[1] The declared range is indicative only and range figures are determined by testing under standardised laboratory conditions in accordance with ADR 81/02. The energy consumption and range figures stated are for the purposes of comparison amongst vehicles tested under the same technical procedures only. Real world energy consumption and range figures may vary and is influenced by many additional factors such as, individual driving style, load, traffic, ambient temperature and vehicle condition.

[2] Minimum charging time at a public direct current (DC) charging station, charging at a continuous rate of 110kW from 10% to 80% battery capacity. Charging times can vary depending on many factors including but not limited to ambient conditions, auxiliary consumables (e.g. seat heating and air-conditioning) and capabilities of charging infrastructure capacity and/or supply.