Sustainability is one the main principles of Loving Earth. It’s all very well to espouse such an ideal, but what are we actually doing about it? Well, our Campbellfield factory has just been certified entirely Carbon Neutral for electricity. We're looking to change over our new Scoresby facility as well. The fact is that to operate a business and do more good than harm to the planet is very, very difficult. Transporting materials, packaging goods, running a manufacturing facility – practically everything we do takes its toll on the environment in one way or another. While the ideal of truly giving more back to our planet than we take is many years away for Loving Earth, it is nevertheless what we aspire to.

Late in 2014 we began participation in the Northern GreenLight Program, funded by the Hume Council and set up for companies to assess and improve environmental and sustainable practices. We assessed ourselves according to a number of standardised criteria and compared ourselves to the other participants, achieving an above average performance compared to the working group of approximately 15 businesses.

We rated as ‘best practice’ and industry leaders in a few areas, mainly those that we knew we perform well in:

• Protection & Enhancement: supporting biodiversity by sourcing organic raw materials.
• Sustainable Process & Design: some of our existing and all of our new products are packed in sustainable packaging materials.
• Partnerships: the Kimberley project and our work with sustainable co-ops abroad.
• Community Engagement: our large following on social media, active online community, the recipes we share through our newsletter and so on.
• Business Innovation & Culture: we manufacture creative products that have resulted in awards such as the Australian Certified Organic Leadership Award.

However, the most important part of this is that it brought to light clear areas for improvement, particularly around usage reduction of energy, water, materials and waste.

We believe that although we do some fabulous things, operationally we perform quite ‘average’ and we are way off being ‘carbon neutral’. As sustainability is central to our brand, woven into our core values and close to the hearts of our employees, our aim is to become an industry leader in this. We have created an Action Plan which prioritises improving our environmental impact. A further priority is to continue to inspire all our stakeholders to become more sustainable.

What we're currently doing is working with our staff to hear their ideas on this, as to really make an impact we will need buy-in at all levels: from the offices to the shop floor and everywhere else in between. This is going to be a really exciting project and we can’t wait to collect and implement good ideas! Watch this space!