1. Introduction

The bakery in this project is a family-owned business in Gaborone, Botswana, that has sold bread and pastries to local customers for almost eleven years [SD1]. It makes about 4,000 sales a month. Every sale leaves in a plastic bag, and about 1,200 pastry orders also go into a plastic clamshell box [SD1]. Regular customers have started to ask about this waste [SD1], and a local supplier now offers compostable bags and bagasse (sugar-cane fibre) boxes, but at higher prices [SD2]. The owner must place the next annual packaging order in March, so the decision cannot wait.

This project looks at the decision through the key concept of sustainability. For a small bakery, sustainability means three things at once: staying profitable over the long term, keeping the trust of the customers and staff who depend on it, and cutting the waste it sends to landfill. A change that helps the planet but pushes the bakery into a loss would not be sustainable. The question is therefore not only whether compostable packaging is "greener", but whether the bakery can afford to make the change last.

2. Tools and theories

Four tools answer different parts of the question. A cost comparison of unit prices [SD2] and monthly volumes [SD1] measures the extra cost and the plastic removed. Contribution and break-even analysis, using the owner's figures [SD1] and customers' reactions to a P1 price rise [SD3], shows how many sales the bakery could lose before profit falls. The triple bottom line (Elkington, 1997) sets the financial results beside the effects on people and the planet, which is how I judge sustainability. Finally, a force-field analysis (Lewin, 1951) weighs the driving and restraining forces from all four documents to reach a decision.

3. Analysis

3.1 Arguments for the switch

The supplier's price list shows that a compostable bag costs P0.85 compared with P0.30 for a plastic bag, and a bagasse box costs P1.60 compared with P1.10 for a plastic clamshell [SD2]. Table 1 applies these prices to the bakery's monthly volumes [SD1].

A full switch would add P2,800 a month and remove 45.6 kg of plastic a month, or about 547 kg a year. The boxes give 47% of the plastic saving (21.6 of 45.6 kg) for only 21% of the extra cost (P600 of P2,800), because each box is three times heavier than a bag. Removing a kilogram of plastic through boxes costs P27.78, less than a third of the P91.67 it costs through bags.

There is also demand for the change. In my survey, 38 of 60 customers (63%) rated environmentally friendly packaging as important or very important, and 41 of 60 (68%) said they would accept paying at least P1 more per purchase for it [SD3]. Pastry buyers were the keenest: 18 of 20 (90%) would accept P1 more, compared with 23 of 40 (58%) of bread buyers [SD3]. The owner sees compostable packaging as a way to stand out from the supermarket bakery nearby, which "competes on price, not on care" [SD1]. If the bakery raised the average purchase price by P1 and lost no customers, the extra P4,000 a month would more than cover the P2,800 cost, leaving P1,200 more contribution a month.

3.2 Arguments against the switch

The cost is large for a business of this size. The bakery earns a net profit of about P7,960 a month (P42,960 contribution minus P35,000 fixed costs) [SD1], so absorbing the full P2,800 would cut profit by 35%, which would not be economically sustainable. A price rise is therefore needed, but price rises carry risk.

Using the owner's contribution figures (P7.20 on an average bread purchase and P19.00 on an average pastry purchase [SD1]), a full switch with a P1 price rise raises total monthly contribution from P42,960 to P44,160. Total contribution would fall back below P42,960 if sales fell by more than about 2.7%, that is, more than 108 purchases a month. The survey suggests losses could be much larger: 8 of 40 bread buyers (20%) and 1 of 20 pastry buyers (5%) said they would probably buy elsewhere if prices rose by P1 [SD3]. On those figures contribution would fall by P4,221 a month. The owner shares this fear: "Some of my regulars count every thebe. If the loaf goes up again, they will walk to the supermarket" [SD1].

The legal and environmental pressure is also weaker than it first appears. Botswana's 2018 plastic bag regulations ban plastic carrier and flat bags but exempt bread bags (ELAW, n.d.), so the bakery is under no legal obligation to change its bread bags. In addition, compostable packaging only breaks down quickly in composting conditions, and most household waste in Gaborone still goes to landfill [SD4]. Some of the environmental benefit in Table 1 may therefore never happen. Bagasse boxes can break down in a home compost heap [SD2], so the bakery could print disposal advice on them, but it cannot control what customers actually do with its packaging.

3.3 What the tools show

Table 2 and Figure 1 compare three options. Option C, a staged switch, changes only the pastry boxes in March and adds P1 to boxed pastry orders, keeping plastic bread bags for now.

Both price-rise options have almost the same safety margin, about 2.5–2.7% of sales, so the real difference is who would be asked to pay. Option B puts the price rise on bread buyers, the group most likely to leave; Option C puts it on pastry buyers, 90% of whom said they would accept it [SD3]. Option A is the only option that is certain to lose money.

Figure 2 brings together the forces from all four documents. I scored each force from 1 (weak) to 5 (strong).

The driving forces total 12 and the restraining forces 11, a narrow result in favour of change. The force field confirms what Table 2 shows: the switch is worth making only if its costs fall on the customers least likely to leave.

Seen through the triple bottom line, Option C is the most sustainable choice: it gives up half of the environmental gain but protects both the profit and the customers on whom the bakery's future depends.

4. Evaluation

The strongest argument against the switch is the price sensitivity of bread buyers, but the evidence for it is weaker than it looks. The 20% figure comes from what customers said, not what they did. When flour prices forced the bakery to raise the price of a loaf by 50 thebe in 2025, the owner reports that sales "were about the same the next month" [SD1]. That suggests real losses would be well below 20%. However, that rise was caused by flour costs that every bakery faced, so customers had nowhere cheaper to go; a P1 rise for packaging would affect only this bakery, so the 2025 experience may understate the risk.

The reliability of each document affects the judgement. My survey [SD3] was a convenience sample of 60 customers at the counter, so it includes only people who already choose this bakery, and customers may overstate their willingness to pay for something that sounds responsible. The pastry result rests on only 20 people: the 5% who would leave is a single person. The owner [SD1] wants the change, so she may play down its risks. The price list [SD2] is reliable because it comes from a real supplier. The newspaper article [SD4] gives a useful outside view of waste in Gaborone but contains no figures about bakery packaging.

The stakeholders who would lose most are low-income regular customers under Option B, and the owner's family under Option A, whose income would fall by a third. Under Option C the pastry buyers pay more, but they are the group most willing to do so [SD3]. Table 2 uses the survey's 5% as if it were a precise figure, but since one customer more or less would change it, Option C's result could lie anywhere from a gain of P600 (no pastry buyer leaves) to a loss of P1,740 a month (two leave).

The key concept changes how the evidence should be weighed. If the question were only about cost, the bakery would keep plastic; if it were only about the environment, it would switch everything. Sustainability requires a change the business can keep going. A full switch that drove away a fifth of bread buyers would remove plastic for a few months and then put the business, and its staff, at risk. The environmental benefit is also uncertain because little packaging is composted in Gaborone [SD4], which makes a smaller, affordable first step more sensible than a large, risky one. By contrast, the strongest argument for the switch, the low cost of removing plastic through boxes, rests on the most factual evidence in the project: unit prices [SD2] and sales volumes [SD1], not opinions. This is why it carries more weight in my judgement than the survey.

5. Conclusion

The analysis shows that a full switch to compostable packaging would add P2,800 a month [SD2], 35% of the bakery's profit [SD1], and that a P1 price rise covers this only if fewer than about 3% of sales are lost. Pastry buyers are far more willing to pay than bread buyers [SD3], and bagasse boxes remove almost half of the plastic for about a fifth of the cost. The force-field analysis gives a narrow result in favour of change, and the main risk is losing price-sensitive bread customers.

Therefore, the bakery should switch to compostable packaging, but in two stages. In the March order it should replace its plastic pastry boxes with bagasse boxes and add P1 to boxed pastry orders. It should keep its plastic bread bags, which remain legal, and decide on them at the next annual order using real sales data from the first stage; the first stage is working if pastry orders stay at or above about 1,170 a month.

In terms of sustainability, this staged change improves the bakery's environmental performance by removing about 260 kg of plastic a year while protecting the profit and customer loyalty that the business needs to survive.

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Supporting documents