Our Environmental Policy
Here at RealFoodSource, we want our planet to thrive which is why we’re constantly looking at ways we can further reduce the impact our business has on the environment. This applies to all aspects of our business from the packaging we choose to the courier services we use, to our food waste, water and energy consumption.
REUSING OUR CARDBOARD WASTE
Firstly, all the bulk food packaging that comes into our warehouse is recycled. This is why your order may have arrived in a recycled box with shredded recycled cardboard inside to protect your goods. We do however understand that certain products need extra measures to prevent damage in transit via our courier services (i.e. glass products). The inflatable plastic sleeves used has been highly effective for preventing damage and they can be recycled.
OUR RECYCLABLE AND BIODEGRADABLE PACKAGING
All our glass bottles and jars and the plastic containers that our food and beauty products come in can be recycled.
In 2018, we started removing our green pouches from our range as these aren’t recyclable. We have been replacing these with clear plastic bags that are recyclable. You just need to remove the label. Near the end of 2018 we went one step further and started a bigger project of replacing these clear recyclable bags with biodegradable and compostable bags. This transition to biodegradable bags was an ongoing project for 2019 as it’s a complex one. For example, some of the oily foods we pack such as nuts and seeds with a long shelf life (which can be many years for quite a lot of our products such as chia seed) may not work in the biodegradable packaging or the packaging may not be durable enough to travel via courier. That being said, we want our planet to thrive and that’s why we’re taking steps to further reduce the impact our business has on the environment.
We still have a few products that are packed into our green pouches. Whilst these green pouches are not recyclable, they are resealable and high-quality and can therefore be re-used many times for many different purposes. You could hold onto these and decant the products you receive in our new packaging into your old green pouches.
Although we have come a long way, in 2020 there have been some challenges due to Covid-19. We have been packing foods at volume to get them out to customers quickly so we can keep lines in stock and available. Therefore we have had to use whatever bags we have available at the point of packing that we can source. Although a lot of our range has moved to biodegradable packaging, for a short period of time we may revert to our recyclable bags.
DELIVERY SERVICES
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.
ZERO FOOD WASTE COMPANY
We firmly believe food waste is bad for our world as any packaging waste which is why we have come up with 3 solutions to this problem which helps us achieve our zero waste status as a business
- Once a product reaches less than 3 months best before date, we offer an excellent discount on them and sell them in our sale area. An important point to note is that the foods we sell have 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.
- In 2019 we started introducing smaller 500g pack sizes of our most popular products so that you can buy the pack size that suits your consumption level. We also started to introduce 100g pack sizes for all our herbs and spices. We want to encourage you to not buy more than you need as you could end up throwing this food away but to rather buy smaller amounts more frequently. We know that food is at its best when purchased and eaten quickly!
- Where we have any leftover products, 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 that 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 proud of our achievements on this to date.ur