We’ve made some changes to how we go about packing up your boxes – here’s a summary of what we use, and why. It’s rather long, but there’s a lot to talk about!
Fruit and vegetables
Your Abel & Cole boxes are used six or more times – so do please leave them out for us to collect.
In the bag
Cardboard absorbs moisture, so we pop things with a high water content – like cucumbers, lettuce and celery – in bags. This creates a microclimate so they remain crisp and crunchy until they get to your fridge.
From time to time (only if we have to) we pop leaves, like spinach, in bags to keep them fresh and safe.
When it comes to deciding between paper or plastic bags, we’ll use paper when we can, but fruit and veg with higher water content make paper bags go soggy and disintegrate.
We meet up with all our farmers and look at all the different options, and we constantly review things.
For example, when we put mushrooms in your box, we used to put a film over the top, but we’ve done away with that now – we snug them into the corner of your box, and generally they stay put!
We also help farmers out by buying bags in bulk and providing them to suppliers, as this saves them money and time.
We’ve recently started bagging up spuds for three reasons:
- To keep any stray soil off your other veg and fruit.
- To protect the box from the potatoes, so we can reuse them more often
- To make life a bit easier for you – potatoes last longer in dry, dark conditions – so you can transfer the bag from your box to the cupboard and they’ll stay happy in their gloomy little home.
We continually try and find the right balance between what’s best for you and your food, and what’s best for the environment.
On the compost?
Paper bags, cardboard, egg cartons and the card-like punnets mushrooms usually come in, are happy on your home compost heap.
We tried out corn starch bags for a while, but after serious consideration switched back to plastic. Here’s why:
- They are often made from a mixture of biodegradable stuff and regular oil-based plastic, so don’t compost in normal garden conditions. We were pulling them out of the compost heap a whole 12 months later.
- Not everyone composts at home – and the biodegradable bags can’t be recycled, so it ends up in landfill. Not what we want.
So we went back to recyclable plastic simply because we know that it really is, and we can recycle it efficiently. If you want to leave your plastic punnets and bags out with your empty boxes, we’ll recycle them for you.
Meat, fish and chilled food
For food hygiene we obviously need to wrap things up properly. This year we’ve reduced the number of bags we use to wrap your chilled food, but the most important change is to the box itself.
To keep all that lovely food cool, we switched from polystyrene boxes to new woolcool insulation. Made from British sheep’s wool (which would otherwise go waste), not from fossil fuel, woolcool doesn’t snap in half like polystyrene can – so we can get lots more uses from it.
Jars and bottles
To keep your jam, wine and other bottles safe when on its way to you, we use origami like separator card. Please leave these out with your box so we can reuse them.
Your councils should collect glass for recycling.
Left overs
We compost all our teabags, apple cores and the like, which feeds our herb garden.
Any left over fruit and veg that can’t make it into your box, either goes to a local charity or gets whipped up into delicious lunches by our resident chef, Paul. Anything that Paul can’t transform goes to a local farmer who feeds it to his pigs.
We recycle all of our cardboard, plastics, wood and glass.
One of our drivers uses any bits of left over wood in his log burning stove which heats his whole house.
All waste cardboard and paper is baled and collected for recycling by a local paper mill, and plastic we bale up and send off to be turned into new things.
We do have some landfill but at the last count this represented less than 10% of our waste. Obviously we’re aiming for 0%.
Leave out for your driver:
- Cardboard boxes (please fold flat, keep dry, and leave out one or two at a time)
- Woolcool boxes®
- Ice boxes
- Gel packs
- Clear plastic Abel & Cole bags
- Punnets
In the recycling:
- Paper bags
- Plastic and glass bottles
- punnets
On the compost
- Egg cartons
- Paper bags
That’s a wrap!
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
19 Jun 2010 at 11:56
Is there any nasties in the egg boxes.Dyes chemicals.
19 Jun 2010 at 12:18
Good to read all this, congratulations.
Another use for washed punnets and yogurt pots (with tops) is to our local day nursery. They also LOVE bubble wrap, for the litle ones to trample on and enjoy the noise! They can’t get enough of these items.
20 Jun 2010 at 08:06
Great to see all this info on the website, any chance of a flyer in the box one week to pin on the fridge for those who can’t remember what goes where?
20 Jun 2010 at 15:56
The larger paper bags make excellent kitchen-scraps-caddy liners – just cut the top off the bag, leaving 6″-8″ of the bottom part (depending on how tall your caddy is), recycle the top and use the bottom as a liner, which can then go in the compost with the scraps. Nice.
21 Jun 2010 at 09:23
The large brown bags are brilliant for emptying the bin of the bagless vacuum cleaner into – no holes for the dust to escape out of, unlike many bags.
By the way, my delivery guy left me a note specifically asking me NOT to fold down the Woolcool boxes – now I’m confused which to do!
Keep up the great work towards 0% waste! Well done.
21 Jun 2010 at 10:19
How about the plastic trays that fish and meat come in? Our local recycling doesn’t take them (plastic bottles only), so they’re going in the bin at the moment. Not ideal.
21 Jun 2010 at 12:57
Hello Sue… Sorry about the confusion over the boxes. The drivers do prefer the woolcool boxes kept whole (we have amended the blog entry now), however, if it’s easier for you to leave them folded, then that is absolutely fine. I’m sorry that your driver left you a note asking for you to keep them whole, please do whichever is more convenient for you!
Hi Paul…. Sorry your council doesn’t collect the plastic meat or fish trays, unfortunately, we’re not able to collect them due to food hygiene reasons. Councils are starting to get better with what they will collect so hopefully yours will collect them soon!
24 Jun 2010 at 14:59
Great idea about using the brown bags in the kitchen caddy – thanks.
I use the egg cartons to start seeds off in, when they’re big enough they can be transplanted with the cardboard shell – works as an alternative to coir pots.
25 Jun 2010 at 11:26
Hello Louise… Sorry it took a while to get back to you – we’re were just triple checking everything! As you’d expect, there are no nasties. Here’s what the egg carton man said, “We manufacture our cartons from recycled waste paper which is principally cellulose wood fibre plus any ink used on the original printed paper. The process we use to break down the paper into pulp relies heavily on water which we recycle many times before putting it back into the waste, and we are required to ensure that any waste water is completely clean.
Any chemical /ink residues present in the waste water are removed during this cleaning process.
Any residues left within the pulp mix are so small as to be considered insignificant and certainly not any danger to human health etc.
In general we use no dyes on grey and white cartons. Vegetable based dyes are used for brighter colours.
I hope this helps answer your question. If you have any further questions, do give us a ring on 08452 62 62 62, or email organics@abelandcole.co.uk
04 Jul 2010 at 14:32
the string you use to tie the boxes with have been a great hit with my daughters as they are into Cats Craddle at school and they can’t get enough of them and they are just the right size.
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