Joanne Howarth wants to fleece the polystyrene packaging industry. The Sydney entrepreneur is on a mission to replace those annoyingly-everywhere beads and other squeaky packing material made from oil or methane with something more environment-friendly: wool. Natural health company Blackmores is among the companies interested in the idea.

Background reading:

• Joanne Howarth’s lightbulb moment came while she was working for one of Australia’s biggest meal-kit delivery companies
• The Labor government has been urged to speed up a plastic policy that will only this year ban the burger ‘clam shells’ axed by McDonalds in 1991.

For more on the episode, visit the Tech Zero site on afr.com. AFR subscribers can also sign up for the weekly Carbon Challenge newsletter.