Let us talk about the ‘P’ word … that word being packaging. We get all sorts of questions about how our products are packaged so we thought we would break it down for you and talk honestly about the type of packaging we use - no greenwashing here.
Before we start (if you were not aware) there are many distinct types of plastic, and they all have a different recycling ability. If you want an in depth look at plastics, then you can read and download a handy guide here https://www.recycle.co.nz/symbols.php
We mostly use Grade 5 Plastic in our packaging. Our Grab’N’Go range of café cookies, our artisan and pantry pack range inserts and our single-wrapped range of cookies (stars, hearts) all use Grade 5.
Grade 5 plastic is designed to be circular. This means we can save it up and we can give it to the recycling center (most supermarkets have a soft plastics recycling bin) who then break it down and make it into more packaging and on it goes. It stops us from making NEW plastic and it also stops that plastic from going into landfill, but only if you recycle it - which we encourage everyone to do. We have plans to make this easier for our customers next year – watch this space!
The other plastic we use are our trays that our scrumptious Ginger Fingers sit in. We are in transition with these – they used to be PVC (Recycle 3), but we are moving them to PET (Recycle 1). It takes time to transition so you will still find the old trays out there. The new PET trays are recyclable, and you can simply give these a clean and put them straight into your kerbside recycling. Ninety-seven percent of New Zealanders have access to facilities that recycle PET plastic, and it is not perfect BUT it’s better than a lot of other food packaging out there like Tetra pack and Styrofoam.
Our packaging is mostly cardboard and one of the best things you can do for our environment is to recycle your paper. When you’ve eaten your cookies flatten our boxes down and pop them into your recycling bin – it saves a huge amount of water and energy. Another way that we have made a better choice using vegetable ink to print our boxes, not only that our local company that we use for our printing is a carboNZero certified company.
You may be thinking - but have they thought of compostable? We have. The technology for compostable packaging and food is not quite there yet and neither are our countries landfills.
We are always looking to do better … so our packaging will be ever evolving as we find new and innovative ways to be more sustainable.