The Honey Packaging Dilemma
Re-Cycle is good, Re-use is better.
We have tried to be an ethical business from the very first day we started, simply because we believe that if you want to live in a certain kind of world, you need to help create it, even in small ways.
If you send honey in a glass jar either via the post or the courier network it cannot be insured. Raw honey in glass jars is precious, delicious, takes great care and love to produce and is broken just as easily as anything else (especially by over-worked and heavy handed couriers).
We have tried, double walled cardboard, filler, triple boxing, bubble-wrapping, all of the above at the same time. It kind of works- though not with kilo jars, but generates a lot of packaging material. Mostly recyclable but not really re-usable. We have looked at all kinds of sustainable packaging, which is not only very expensive but is no more effective in protecting the glass.
Packaging has been an ongoing consideration and subject of refinement over the years, We are also limited by what is available, and iby a market-place where everyone is encouraged to regard price-competitiveness as the major factor in decision-making,
As a friend and one-time boss used to say, "We have good, fast and cheap, pick any two".
One day last year, after a bad bout of breakages, which are pretty tragic, (it can take hundreds of thousands of visits to flowers by bees to make just one kilo of pure raw honey), I just could not stand the waste any more.
After much research our solution was to come up with a product which is the inflatable, air-cushion bag, This object is amazing, it is not 100% courier proof, but it's close. Breakages are almost a thing of the past. However we have a new problem, it is now the horrible waste generated by a plastic object which is very expensive and used only once. This is like the ultimate in eco-unfriendly packaging.
Our solution is simple, if we don't want to create waste, then we have to re-use the air-bags which means that customers have to return them to us. Most of our stockists have been really happy to co-operate with this and so, for all our commercial customers we provide them with a Freepost address to return the air-bags. We are now extending this to all our UK customers.
So from now on, when you receive your honey, you will also receive a packing slip with a Freepost address, just stuff the packaging back in the box and send it back to us so that we can re-use it. It's free to you, we just need you to put in the post. We really appreciate it, we hope you do too.
Our competitors like to copy what we do, this is the one time we'd be really happy if they did.
Comments on this post (2)
Good idea to I’m very impressed. We, want to you speak here. I’m frm India( south Asia) I’m a Indian beekeeper. So we want start a honey packaging and branding.
— Vidyanand Ahire
Great idea and initiative, good luck!
Thank you for being environmental conscious, and also for selling amazing honey! .
Warm greetings from Amsterdam.
Kari
— Kari