With an abundance of fresh veg, salad greens and herbs harvested from the Spier Food Garden, it’s good to know that the produce that needs protection is packaged with environmentally friendly, compostable packaging.
All produce goes through a food safety and quality assurance process in the new packhouse facility where our small team washes and packages the produce. This important step ensures that the food garden delivers excellent, organically-grown and nutritious veg to our restaurants, the Farm Cafe and online customers (order your box here!).
Megan McCarthy, Spier’s Agri-ecologist says, “When it comes to fresh fruit and veg, different problems arise in how to store and safely deliver to customers, and packaging solutions play an important role in preserving product quality. Many customers also like to get a good look at fresh produce, and choose the individual pack they want to buy, and this is why plastic packaging solutions have met multiple needs in the past. However, in line with Spier’s eco-friendly ethos, we want a plastic-free solution for the produce that cannot be sold loose.”
Spier Food Garden produce is only packed in compostable packaging, made using a plant-based starch polymer. This is a cellulose technology that is petroleum-free, which means that it is suitable for home composting. It is a clear material, so it looks like it could be plastic, but it’s got a distinct crinkly texture, and the great news is that it breaks down as fast as newspaper will in your compost heap. If it happens to go to landfill, it’s still safe for the environment. For composting, all you need to do is snip the label off and add it to your compost heap with your other plant-based kitchen and garden waste.
What’s important to note is that compostable packaging must not be disposed of with plastic recycling and enter the plastic waste stream. If you don’t compost at home, it’s safe to bin it with your non-recyclable waste.
Interested in getting a home composting project off the ground? You can join us for an upcoming Food Garden workshop, ‘Making Compost Easy’, on Saturday, 7 August 2021. Find out more about the workshop here.