Our Packaging
Corn packing chips, vegetable glues and bubble wrap that biodegrades – our packaging is as green as our split peas.
We think long and hard about what we sell and what we don’t sell, but we also carefully consider what we give away in terms of packaging and disposables. In our stores we use compostable food containers made from sugar cane pulp on our food to go bars, and we were the first UK supermarket to launch compostable carrier bags made from cornstarch. Developing a retail web site and expanding into nationwide deliveries brought a new set of packaging challenges, but we are happy with the solutions we have found, and we hope you will be too.
- Your delivery will come in a 100% post-consumer recycled cardboard box, which is made in the UK and printed with vegetable inks.
- The tape that holds the box closed is gummed paper, which can be recycled with the box, while the gum is made from plant starch.
- The packaging chips inside the box are made from expanded corn. They are actually edible, a bit like tasteless Wotsits, not that we recommend tucking in. They are totally compostable, so can be added to your compost heap, put into composting facilities if there is one near you, or will break down a lot faster than polystyrene if they go into landfill.
- Sometimes a bit more protection is needed for fragile goods, but the bubble wrap that we use is biodegradable. It can be reused over and over, but when it finally goes into landfill it will breakdown within a few years, rather than a few millennia.
- Oh, and for the good of the planet, it is actually a moral duty to joyously pop all the bubbles before you throw it away, as it reduces the volume of waste.