After a two-year journey, organic veg box company Riverford has switched to all of its packaging on fruit and veg to home compostable. This action will save 21 tons of plastic every year, on top of an existing switch for netted produce into nets made from sustainable beech wood.
The employee-owned firm based in Staverton -Devon- said the switch will cost around £300,000 a year. These costs will however not be passed on to customers.
Riverford’s sustainability manager, Zac Goodall said: “After many months of intensive research, we decided on the sustainable future of our packaging: 100 per cent home compostable materials. Once disposed of, this packaging will disintegrate into pieces smaller than 2mm within six months, and properly biodegrade (breaking down not into microplastics, but into carbon dioxide, water vapour and organic matter, just like a plant decomposing) within a year. It will break down like this even in low temperatures, such as your home compost heap.”
Riverford hopes its home compostable packaging offers a solution for green home deliveries to ethical consumers, ensuring its organic vegetables can be delivered without adding to the plastic problem. And it hopes other companies will follow suit, with customers asking on social media why supermarkets have not yet done the same.
Source: business-live.co.uk
