Wild Country Organics and plastic bags

We would all like to reduce plastic pollution, however it is not straight forward to eliminate it from the stall. At the moment there is no real alternative to plastic for getting our fresh produce from the farm to the customer’s plate without wasting a large percentage of it.

Benefits.

– Leafy vegetables start to wilt as soon as they are harvested, the bags provide a protected
environment to get fresh leafy produce from the field to you.

-It prevents massive food waste, both at the farm, at the market and in your fridges at home.

-It allows the wide variety of relatively unknown leaves to be labelled, so everyone knows what they are, how to cook them and food allergies can be avoided.

-It keeps them clean and hygienic as many customers eat their leaves raw.

-The left over produce in bags can be distributed, during the week after markets, to charities all over London by City Harvest.
It can be divided up according to need and arrives fresh and labelled so people know what it is.

Without bags our leftover loose leaves are only good for compost on Monday morning, not human consumption. Everyone at the farm is much happier to see the fruits of our hard work eaten by people in need rather than dumped on the compost heap.

Mitigation

-From early on we have done research to choose the best bags. We use polythene because it is the most easy to recycle, unlike the crinkly films used by supermarkets for their salads.

-We use zip seal bags so they can be reused multiple times by the customer for instance to store other veg like cucumbers etc to keep them fresher. Try them instead of cling film, they will keep a bowl of leftover dinner fresh in the fridge.

-Biodegradable bags if not composted properly are worst for the environment, in landfill they break down anaerobically and release methane. They also contaminate recycled plastic if not properly separated. Many commercial composters sieve all food waste for plastic bags, this includes biodegradable bags, which are all then landfilled.

-We have switched to paper punnets for soft fruit.

-The biggest problem with plastic is that once it becomes waste it is irresponsibly managed and poorly recycled. Consumer pressure must be focused on waste management, as organic farmers we are already trying our best to be sustainable.

Please do your share by using the bags again and making sure your council recycle their plastic and polythene waste.