Worms Direct has been in business for almost 20 years, during this period we have been conscious of the use of environmentally unfriendly materials and processes, it was inevitable that plastics would be used, particularly in packaging after all, worms tend to live in damp materials!
The tubs we use are manufactured from high grade plastics making them readily reusable and easily recycled, boxes and packaging are of cardboard or paper, again easily recycled, we admit we did get drawn into using plastic tape for the packaging, mainly because it was quick and easy to use, however, we have now dispensed with plastic tapes and replaced it with gummed paper tape and it looks a lot smarter! the plastic documents enclosed envelopes used for attaching the paperwork have been replaced by “green” envelopes, the manufacturers claim these biodegrade in a few months but there seems to be some doubt about this if and when buried deep in landfill so we are still looking for a viable alternative.
The biggest challenge we still have is finding an alternative to the white woven poly bags we use for the larger orders of worms, we have looked at cotton and hessian bags, both ideal but very expensive to buy ready made, we have been making up our own but this is not ideal so the search goes on.
There are several other areas where we are eliminating plastics too many to list but an example being we no longer use the plastic bags supplied by the courier for shipping lightweight items as a “5kg pack” instead we are paying a little extra to send them as a normal parcel in a cardboard box.
Use of plastics and what we are doing about it.
02
May