Yes, of course. In terms of a business of our size, especially as a new business, a lot of our pain points are getting noticed and making an impact, especially at the scale of what we operate. We would definitely like to see more access to funding.
We would also like to touch a little more on the Canadian companies that we actually partner up with. There are so many wonderful Canadian company owners here right now manufacturing PPE and other green products. A lot of us look for these requests for proposals that the federal and the provincial governments release for bids and tenders.
Unfortunately, a lot of us get overlooked in terms of our competitiveness and the prices that we can offer. A lot of these are awarded to imported products, like imported straws or imported takeout containers. Everything is very hard for us to compete with, especially with the labour and the wage that it costs for us to manufacture even one straw.
For example, an imported straw from China can cost less than half a cent. For us to manufacture just one paper straw on Canadian soil with Canadian labour, it costs us about seven or eight cents. It is very hard for us to compete, although we do target a little bit of the pain points. For straws, we don't just make a regular straw. A pain point is that when people drink out of paper straws, they get soggy and it's disgusting when you get [Technical Difficulty—Editor] in your mouth. We came up with a brand new coating. It is our own trademarked coating. We have paper straws that actually last in your drink for eight to 12 hours. We did target these pain points and come up with new ways to help people move. At the same time, straws are a cheap product, but any green solution is a solution.