We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Aaron Saks. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Aaron below.

Aaron, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s talk legacy – what sort of legacy do you hope to build?

My hope is that I leave the world cleaner and greener for my children and grandchildren. Our company was founded by my father with a similar goal, and he passed that vision on to me. We hope that by advocating and developing solutions for a zero-waste culture, that we can reduce the amount of waste humanity will leave behind. Our motto is “one cup at a time”. If everyone works to eliminate one plastic item from their life, we could significantly reduce the amount of waste that we generate. I’m hoping that when my children are grown, waste is the exception and not the norm.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My name is Aaron Saks, and I am the general manager of Green Paper Products. Our company was founded in 2009 by my father Steve and his childhood best friend, Harry Goodfriend. Having both recently retired from their professions, Steve and Harry were looking for a way to make a lasting contribution. Harry had prior experience with paper products and logistics, and they soon began selling compostable cups made from plants. As demand grew, they began to offer a wider range of compostable and eco-friendly products. These include plates, cups, tableware, cutlery, and food packaging. Our products are certified compostable by BPI (the Biodegradable Products Institute).

I left a career in Aerospace and came in to lead the business in 2020, right in time for COVID. We successfully navigated all the challenges associated with COVID, including a major shift in the restaurant industry and supply chain challenges. Since then, we have had triple-digit growth.

Our business is exciting because we can help our customers become more sustainable. We serve a lot of small businesses, and for them, it is important to choose sustainable and zero-waste options. We recently helped a coffee shop eliminate styrofoam cups for a plant-based, custom-printed cup. We set ourselves apart from our competition by offering the best service to our customers in all aspects of our business. Our customers can use our website, email, call, or text us to contact us or place an order. We also make sure to stock a wide range of products, so that we can make sure our customers have the products they need when they need them.

We keep sustainability a daily part of our business. Our shipments are all Carbon Neutral through our partnership with UPS, and we update our office and warehouse with energy-efficient lights, equipment, and technology.

We’d love to hear your thoughts about selling platforms like Amazon/Etsy vs selling on your own site.

We sell on our website, greenpaperproducts.com. In 2022 we completed re-platform and launched a brand new version of our website. Our previous site was a custom built site, with a custom shopping cart. Are new site is on Shopify Plus, with a headless CMS using StoryBlok (I know this is a lot of jargon). The bottom line is that this gave us a much more flexible and scaleable website. We can now easily integrate many features which help us provide a better user experience and improve our marketing.

Building a new website was quite a challenge, but also very rewarding. You get to see the fruit of your labor come to life as you develop it.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

I think that our customer service and communication have helped us build our reputation. We have a phone number and you can call and talk to us – something that many companies are not doing these days. We go out of our way to help our customers pick the products that will work for them, whether it is for home or business. We can’t always offer the lowest price, but we work to keep our margins low and provide the best value for our customers.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://greenpaperproducts.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/GreenPaperProducts/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/green.paper.products/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/greenpaperproducts
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/GreenPaperProd
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/GreenPaperProducts/featured
• Other: https://www.shopperapproved.com/reviews/greenpaperproducts.com/