Posts
I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream!
Sunday, 13 September 2009
Our family loves ice cream.
My husband's favourite variety is the locally-produced Rush Munro's Maple and Walnut flavour. It is delicious. It's a favourite with guests too. We're talking seriously good ice cream here.
However, we've stopped buying it. In an effort to reduce our plastic consumption, we decided that we would no longer buy unnecessary items that were packaged in plastic. Other ice cream varieties are available that are packaged in cardboard, so we've switched over.
I thought it was fair to let the Rush Munro company know why we've made the switch from their ice cream. After all, we loved their product. So I wrote them an email:
- Dear Sir/Madam,
I love your ice cream, but I have decided that I will no longer buy it for my family and myself.
I believe it is fair to write to your company and explain why.
As fairly environmentally-aware consumers, we are trying to reduce the amount of plastic, in particular disposable plastic, that we buy. So when there is a choice between a product available in plastic and a similar product packaged in cardboard, we will now choose the cardboard-packaged product in preference. We will only buy plastic packaged products when no better environmental option exists.
We've been buying the maple and walnut Rush Munro ice cream for a while now. But from now on we're switching to a similar product from another company that is packaged completely in cardboard.
I'd like to return to your product, because we love your ice cream and have always really enjoyed it. But we don't believe it is appropriate to create plastic waste that will exist for hundreds of years simply because we feel like a treat for our kids and ourselves.
Did you know that every single bit of plastic that has ever been created is still in existence? That's a really heavy footprint, and we're trying to lighten ours.
I respectfully ask that you change your packaging to 100% consumer quality NZ cardboard as soon as possible. We think that great food and great environmental standards should go hand in hand. Then we, and other families who have also opted out of the "disposable plastic" nightmare, can return to enjoying your ice cream :-)
Sincerely,
Leanne Veitch
And I received this letter in the post just last week:
Here's the text:
- Dear Leanne,
We very much appreciate your feedback, feedback is very important to Rush Munro's both positive and negative, as it allows us to evaluate any complaints and investigate, plus ensuring the positive are continued.
We are sorry to hear that you will be changing your ice cream brand because of our packaging as we have had excellent comments on our new packaging, both the new look of our brand and also the packaging itself.
Our 1 Litre ice cream packaging was selected specifically to achieve a number of things, one being a better seal for product protection and quality to ensure the consumer received product in the best possible condition.
Rush Munro's will be looking into a cardboard packaging at a later date due to the same issues that you yourself have with our current packaging. As you could appreciate there is a huge cost in re-branding and re-packaging a product.
I myself use the containers as storage containers and kindergartens, schools etc. like to use them for kids artwork also.
Please let me know if you would like me to send you a supermarket voucher for a 1 Litre ice cream.
Kind regards,
Tracie Allen
Sales and Marketing Coordinator.
I'm pleased that the company got back to me so promptly and, reading from the letter, it sound as though I am not the only one who has raised the issue of plastic packaging!
If you live in New Zealand, or consume this product, you might want to consider requesting the company to change their packaging as well. It sounds to me as though they're thinking about it. A few more letters just might do the trick! You can contact them through their website.
In the meanwhile, I'm going to write back to the company and thank them for their letter, repeat my request that they change their packaging, and decline the supermarket voucher.
We can make a difference!
I've been writing letters like this for a while. As consumers, we have a huge amount of power in encouraging companies to change packaging for the better. It is up to us to encourage them to make sustainable choices.
My next point of call will be milk companies. I think it's about time we saw the return of glass milk bottles, don't you?
--
Cluttercut - Be the change
6 comments:
I remember you wrote to Nuttlex a while ago: they now use a different plastic for their containers. It's #5 (can't remember what the old one was), and our council does recycle it.
very cool! i am considering writing a letter, and am so glad that you shared yours. You were so polite, i definitely need to remember to "tone it down some!". lol.
i also think that a return to glass bottles would be fabulous. In BC (Canada) there were several farms who had glass bottles. it was super cool. :) Love to hear the update!
Hi Pyrrha - Yay for Nuttelex changing their containers! Thats a while ago I wrote to them!
Ideally, I'd like to see non-plastic containers though, or refillable.
I don't see why they couldn't use glass, for example, which is a lot more likely to be recycled, and would work fine for margarine. But it's a change for the better :-)
Hi Eco Yogini - I've learned to "tone it down" the hard way! The whole "catching more flies with honey" thing and all that! :-)
I'll start on the milk bottle thing by finding out why and when milk stopped being delivered and sold in bottles, and take it from there. I think we need to return to the old ways, and I'm sure that we can do it, and that enough people would be interested in a return to glass, now that the problems of plastic are becoming more widely known.
I know that the reason they stopped the re-fillable glass bottles where I live is because people weren't returning them in a re-usable state and it was costing them too much to constantly replace them. (something about some mad scientist dude on the telly putting hard boiled eggs in them using air pressure, they couldn't get the eggs back out when the kids tried it at home ;-p) and plastic was cheaper than disposable glass. At least the plastic bottles are recyclable, I just bought some new shopping bags that proudly proclaim that they are made from 3 plastic bottles.
Hi Gerrie - I figured it would come down to money. It almost always does.
But we have a HUGE plastic problem in our world. And the more research I do, the more I'm becoming convinced that plastics may not be safe - certainly polycarbonate isn't, and babies bottles are still commonly made from that! Which is scary.
Glass is not perfect - you only have to ask any self-respecting archaeologist about the gazillions of glass bottles in perfect condition that are still around from Roman times in Europe. But it is better than plastic, very recyclable, and very re-usable. And it is safe.
With glass in combination with simply cutting down on our impact, by using less in the first place, we can really make a huge difference in the garbage problem that we have. But if we continue to think that we can solve our issues by recycling, we're just painting ourselves into a corner. Using *more* energy to re-create unsustainable products into more unsustainable products never made sense, no matter how green we try to paint it.
Saying that, it's great to hear that at least they're doing *something* with all those bloody plastic milk cartons!
We use rice milk at home, and you can't even recycle the UHT mixed foil-cardboard-plastic containers at all - ridiculously wasteful packaging at its worst. Our only option, as my son cannot consume cows' milk or most soy milks, is to simply use less. Which we're doing.
Regardless, I'm going to lobby the bastards. With a serious deposit system in place, I don't see why we can't return to glass - for soy and rice milks, as well as cows' milk.
Post a Comment