Regeneration is a core value of our business at Loving Earth. If you’re not sure what that means exactly, regeneration is one step further than sustainability. It means not just sustaining our current world, but actively regenerating it - and we’re here for it. We’re always researching and revising our sourcing to find options that help regenerate the planet, whether it’s ingredients for products, or the packaging they’re wrapped in.

Part of our APCO membership involves posting our Annual Report and Action Plan which you can read here. And when it comes to packaging sustainability we’re very proud to be considered ‘Beyond Best Practice’. The report itself is pretty dry so we thought we’d add a little refresher on what makes our packaging so great – and some changes on the horizon as we keep evolving.

30g Chocolate Film
Our 30g chocolate has been wrapped in compostable packaging for approximately ever, right from its first release over a decade ago. We’ve made a small but excellent improvement to it – it’s now certified home-compostable. This means stringent testing to ensure it breaks down in a home compost bin over a reasonable time. We’re also moving our printing onto Australian soil so there are less packaging miles travelled. You’ll start seeing the ABA AS 5810 home-compostable logo rolling out on this range in the coming months.

What does that mean for you? It means you can enjoy your chocolate, the bugs in your compost can enjoy the wrapper, and it all disappears without a trace – the magic of zero waste.

45g, 70g & 80g Chocolate Packaging
Our chocolate bar and block packaging has been fully home-compostable forever, too. Contrary to appearances the clear film around our chocolate is not plastic - it’s a 100% plant-based film, made from renewable plant-fibre, and is certified home-compostable.

Our chocolate boxes have also been thoughtfully chosen. They are made from post-consumer recycled fibre, and printed with vegetable-based inks. This means no new trees are cut down to make our boxes, and no toxic chemicals seep into our water ways through inks or dyes. You can recycle or compost these boxes, and the same goes for all of our boxes - be it cereal, chocolate, Xmas or Easter. We make our products from plants and wrap them in plants!

Superfood Jars
For a long time, we considered glass to be the most sustainable option for our jars.  Now we realise glass poses more than one problem. First off, it breaks in transit. Often. And this not only causes food waste but also, once broken, glass cannot be recycled in Australia. It inevitably ends up in landfill.

The bigger problem, though, is the severe sand shortage happening across the globe. Sand is an essential ingredient in concrete, asphalt and glass, and there’s been a 3 fold growth in demand over the last 20 years.

“Sand is the second-most used resource on Earth, after water. It is often dredged from rivers, dug up along coastlines and mined. The 50 billion tonnes of sand thought to be extracted…every year is enough to build a nine-storey wall around the planet.”

UN ENVIRONMENT PROGRAMME
https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/problem-our-dwindling-sand-reserves

With that in mind, we’re transitioning our jars to ones made from 100% rPET. These jars are made in Melbourne from 100% post-consumer recycled plastic, they are lighter to transport, they seldom break, and they are easily recycled.

Apart from not using sand, these jars also repurpose the used plastic we’re currently drowning in; plastic that’s not disappearing anytime soon. Recycling brings it back into our cycle of everyday objects and create a circular economy, diverting it from landfills and oceans.

We know that many folks aren’t fans of plastic, but we’ve come to realise it’s the best, imperfect solution for us right now. We’ll keep looking for better options but for the reasons outlined above, APCO supports this as a more sustainable packaging transition. We’ve opted for stacker caps for these jars, so that they can be re-used in your pantry at home once empty, ready to be filled with goodies from your local bulk store.

Thanks for reading right to the end, and we’ll keep you posted as our practices evolve.

Much love, team LE xx