ENVIRONMENTAL STATEMENT
We first published this in 2019, and have updated it a number of times since then, as we've improved.

WE’RE NOT PERFECT. 
We acknowledge there will be better ways of doing things.  Please get in touch with ideas on how we can improve.  Sometimes it’s still just too expensive to do the best thing, sometimes we have big stocks and we need to use them up first (like bubble wrap), and sometimes there are just complications.  

WHAT WE DO:

• ​We re-use packaging.  Cardboard boxes, newspaper, bubble wrap.  Occasionally also courier bags.
• We combine packaging as much as possible.
• We try to minimise the use of plastic bubble wrap and similar material.  We’ve received a lot in the past and it’s taking ages to use it all up.  Friends know er re-use it and keep giving it to us, too.​
• We've moved to home-compostable courier bags, although for one of the courier services we use, we are forced to use plastic.

WHAT YOU COULD DO:

• Get your deliveries sent to your work or friend’s address in the town centre rather than your home address in a suburb or the countryside.  The final leg of a courier delivery has been estimated to contribute 50% of the carbon emissions of shipping. Reducing the distance driven and number of stops made will reduce those emissions. 
• Re-use the packaging you receive…. 
  • ​Open courier bags carefully at the end with scissors, and you should be able to re-use them inside out.
  • Don’t play pop-the-bubbles with bubble wrap!  Use it to protect something you’re sending or storing.
  • After we read them, we re-use our local newspapers as packaging - so sit down and have a read of recent goings on in Marlborough!
• If you haven’t a use for the packaging, please recycle it.
• For regular customers: consider ordering twice as much half as often.  (Your per-unit shipping cost will be halved!)​