Sustainability has become a catch-all phrase that can often feel hollow, especially when companies are accused of greenwashing, or misleading consumers with their claims. Making claims about single-use plastic bottles being 100% recyclable when they are not, or stating their environmental impact is low when their ‘recycled’ products end up in landfills can make you feel disheartened. What’s the point you may ask, when some of the largest companies in the world are saying one thing and doing another?
As consumers, we all have choices about what we buy, and the companies we support. Although it’s easy to point to big companies and criticize what they are doing, we can all make changes at the individual level that matter. Even small changes matter!
For Little Pips, sustainability is about thinking through every decision we make in terms of how it impacts each of us and the planet on which we live. We are not perfect, and we have far to go, but we make these claims and promises to our customers:
· We will never knowingly purchase fruit from outside Aotearoa NZ. Reducing the impact of transporting products to Aotearoa NZ is important to us. However, in acknowledging this, we use organic sugar imported from Brazil.
· We will continue to support NZ growers who are investing in sustainable growing practices and contributing to our economy.
· Although using glass bottles has environmental impacts (for instance it uses more energy to produce than plastic, glass is less toxic, and can be recycled), we will continue to use glass bottles until a better product is developed. See https://carbonbright.co/glass-vs-plastic-packaging-which-is-better for more comment.
· We primarily use card and paper for our packaging. We do use plastic tape for securing our boxes which we have found is more reliable than paper tape given the weight of our bottles.
· In our production, we use every part of the fruit. For instance, we use the skins and flesh of our Black Doris Plums, Strawberries, and Rhubarb. We also use the zest (skin) of our Lemons; thus we have very little fruit residue left over. What we do have left over, we compost.
· We compost our tasting cups, and the seeds and stones from production.
· We offer a return policy on our (clean) bottles returned to the Titirangi Market (.50c / bottle).
· We support the most vulnerable people living in our communities by donating a percentage of sales to organisations that care for them.
· We pay our staff above the living wage (see: https://www.livingwage.org.nz/lw24)