Here at RealFoodSource we take the impact we have on our environment very seriously. This applies from everything from our packaging, the courier services we choose, the energy and water consumption we make to our drive to have near zero food waste which is quite unique for a food company! We are constantly on the look out to identify ways we can improve this further.
Firstly, all the bulk food packaging that comes into our warehouse is recycled, hence why your order may have arrived in a recycled box with shredded recycled cardboard inside to protect your goods. However, we do understand that certain products need extra measures to prevent damage in transit via our courier services i.e. glass products. The inflatable plastic used has been highly effective for preventing damage.
For the packaging we use for our foods and beauty products all our glass bottles and jars can be recycled along with all our plastic containers. While our current green pouch packaging is not recyclable we have recently introduced a real value range with clear recyclable packaging. Whilst our green packaging is not recyclable it is resealable and high-quality and can therefore be re-used many times for many different purposes. However we will be phasing out the use of these non recyclable pouches as soon as possible. We are always on the lookout for more environmentally friendly packaging and are currently testing out compostable packaging to replace our green pouches.
In terms of our choice in courier service we use Royal Mail and DPD local courier services. DPD local is a zero carbon delivery service.
We also think it’s very important not to waste food and each year we pretty much use or sell all the foods we offer. We would rather sell off foods in our sale area if they are approaching their best before dates at a loss than discard them. An important point to note is that the food we sell has best before dates and not expiry dates and is therefore safe to eat after the date – see our blog on this for more details here. Once a product reaches less than 3 months best before date we offer an excellent discount on it and put it in the sale area of our website – take a look and pick yourself up a bargain! Where we have any left over product we use this for product development and recipe development to create new tasty recipes for our free downloadable recipe ebooks and recipe section of our website.We don’t like the idea our products could sit in kitchen pantries unused so we also hope our drive to give away simple, easy recipes for our products also helps reduce food waste for our customers too. For any that is still left over our kids eat a lot of nuts, seeds, chocolate drops and coconut oil :-)!
While we are not perfect and still have a lot to do, as a small family company we are quite proud of our achievement for this to date.