Best Bee Brothers Committed to BEE-ing Better
Committed to BEE-ing Better is our guiding principle: to do our part for the environment and help our customers come along on the journey. We explore our products from all angles – design, manufacturing, distribution, use and end-of-life impact. In addition, we are committed to chemical-free pest control solutions and products and to programs that support healthy and thriving backyard ecosystems.
Virgin Plastic to Recycled Ocean-Bound Plastic
BEE-ing committed starts with focusing on the most popular product – we started with our best-seller, the Best Bee Brothers Best Carpenter Bee Trap. Selling hundreds of thousands of these traps annually, we wanted to stop using virgin plastic to make our roofs and replace them with a more sustainable option. Our search led us to Oceanworks and the eventual transition to 100% recycled ocean-bound plastic. The partnership resulted in the beautiful, durable forest-green eco-friendly roof that our customers know and love.
The change made a measurable impact. Making the switch, we diverted tons of plastic from plaguing our waterways and shorelines. To date, Best Bee Brothers has ordered 33 metric tons of fully recycled ocean-bound plastic filling close to two 18-wheelers. That's a lot of plastic!
Small Change, Big Results
This recycled ocean-bound plastic was a simple substitution in the Best Bee Brothers manufacturing process, but more importantly, this recycled material innovation is netting major sustainability results. Using those 33 metric tons of recycled ocean-bound plastic instead of virgin plastic has avoided the creation of 26.13 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) and saved more than 165,000 kWh of energy.
By not generating that additional CO2e, Best Bee Brothers saved the equivalent of 2,940 gallons of gasoline (or 65,652 miles driven by a passenger car). That CO2e avoidance also equates to the emissions from powering a standard home for three years or the carbon sequestered each year by 21 acres of trees.
Meanwhile, the energy saved by using recycled ocean-bound plastic versus virgin plastic exceeds the electricity produced by more than 42 million AA batteries. As an added bonus, 687 cubic meters of plastic didn’t end up in a landfill or find its way to our oceans.
Better yet, Best Bee Brothers chose a green plastic that closely matched the traps’ existing product colorway. Manufacturers often disregard colored plastics since they are harder to use across a variety of applications. By using a colored plastic that matched our needs, Best Bee Brothers not only used recycled materials, but aided in the off-take of material that often never stands a chance of being reused.
Starting in 2022 we kicked off Impac+ to make an even bigger dent in the trash in oceans and waterways. Each time a customer registers their new trap, Oceanworks takes five pounds of trash out of the ocean. This program promises to yield big results in 2023.
Better Packaging for Best Carpenter Bee Traps
BEE-ing better means continuing to look for opportunities to make our number one selling trap even more eco-friendly. In 2022 we removed all blister packs and redesigned our packaging with infinitely recyclable 100% post-consumer recycled paper. In 2023, we redesigned our top-selling Pine Wood Trap, for launch in May 2023, to reduce size and weight, leading to positive impacts of lowering the eco-cost of shipping and transporting. Our redesigned product requires new packaging, and we committed again to using 100% post-consumer recycled paper and minimizing the amount of packaging needed to ship.
Behavior-Based and Chemical-Free Solutions
Pest control with chemicals may seem fast and easy, but we believe there is a better, safer way for our pets, our families and our backyard ecosystems. Rooted in our founding principles and planting seeds for our company’s future, we are Committed to BEE-ing Better by using only natural solutions, like our behavioral-based carpenter bee traps. The traps target only carpenter bees by mimicking their desired nesting spots. Our commitment extends to our repellents for mosquitoes, ticks, no-see-ums and carpenter bees. These repellents use naturally derived, essential oil-based formulations that our customers trust and love.
Supporting Native Pollinators with Thriving, Healthy Backyards
While many of our products are designed to deter and control pests naturally, we are Committed to BEE-ing Better to our backyard pollinators too. Our Mason Bee Homes and chainsaw-carved homes make fun projects and great microhabitats to attract these helpful solitary bees in your backyard. And by offering free seed packets with every order at bestbeebrothers.com, we’ve provided enough pollinator wildflower seeds to cover 10,000 square feet of wildflowers and counting!
Building Community by Educating Our Customers
Finally, we are Committed to BEE-ing Better by using our knowledge as experts in the field to help provide customers with information they can rely on to fight pests naturally. Our ever-growing library of blog posts covers topics from chemical-free ways to protect your home from pests, to identifying and targeting the right species. We also offer product support resources to help our customers use our products in an environmentally responsible way, and offer tips on how to build and maintain a backyard ecosystem that protects honeybees, other native pollinators and all of their friends.
We invite our community of Best Bee Brothers customers to join us on our journey to protect backyard biodiversity while keeping our homes and families safe from pests. We are Committed to BEE-ing Better, and together, we can ensure a safer, brighter future for pollinators and people.