Our Commitment to Sustainability as an Organic and Direct & Fair-Trade Spice Company

We love this planet, and we’re dedicated to being an eco-friendly spice business. That’s actually not super easy (or affordable) in this day and age for a small business, but we don’t care. We think an investment in helping to save this planet is worth it.

In additional to the following eco-friendly practices, we donate to Conversation International, which works to stop climate change, heal our oceans and create self-sustaining, scalable conservation models around the world.

We Reduce Waste/Pollutants

• On the supply chain side, we’ve reduced our plastic consumption by 55% and our paper waste by 40% in 2021. Those numbers will only rise.
• We source fair trade and direct from farmers, instead of the big spice companies where one bottle of their spice could have spices sourced from hundreds of farmers around the world. Our way means we greatly cut down on spice shipping distances, reducing our carbon footprint (and it also means farmers get paid fairly).
• We use eco-friendly, recyclable paper tape
• We use reusable burlap bags for gift wrapping spice bundles (instead of using plastic or one-time use bags)
• We switched from cardboard gift boxes to reusable burlap bags
• We use lightweight spice packaging, which leaves a much lighter carbon footprint than heavy glass or plastic jars when it ships to you.
• We upgraded our printing system which reduces our shipping and packaging label waste by letting us use smaller labels and stickers, which saves about 45% of waste when compared to traditional labels and stickers.
• We’re a committed one-car household (Thomas and I are partners in spice and in life, you can get to know more about us here if you’re interested). When the other person is at the spice shop early with the car (which is needed for our daily mail/UPS drop offs), the other person rides their bike to the shop.
• We use reusable cloth towels instead of paper towels for cleaning. Our washer and dryer is eco friendly and uses way less water and energy than typical washers/dryers.
• We’ve switched to recyclable shipping labels so boxes and bags can be more easily recycled
• We’ve switched to recyclable package labels so they can be recycled

 

We Reuse

• We try to reuse all the boxes and packing material we receive. What we can’t, we recycle.
• We often buy used (thoroughly cleaned) shop equipment like storage racks to keep perfectly good items from ending up in a landfill.

We Recycle

• We recycle everything we can. At the end of the week, our recycling dumpster is always packed at least 10X more than our trash dumpster.

We Say YES to Nature, NO to Chemicals/Things that are Harmful to Our Planet

• Our organic farmers make lots of space for bee colonies to thrive because it helps with cross pollination. In fact having bees on your spice farm can increase spice yield naturally by 100-150%. The bees get fed a healthy, chemical-free diet and more spice crops are grown – a win-win for everyone.
• We partner with certified organic farmers because it produces better spices, but it also keeps nasty chemicals from seeping into the ground and people’s water sources. Here’s a little more information on why organic matters when it comes to spices.
• Our spices are never irradiated (given intense doses of ionizing radiation in the form of gamma rays, X-rays or electron beams), which creates a huge amount of environmental waste and is not so great for humans to consume.
• Our spices are dry steamed or dried naturally with the sun.

What’s Coming Next…

We’re already doing a lot of sustainable best practices, but we can always do better. We have a lot more planned, including:

• We’re switching to more eco-friendly spice packing by May15, 2023 (hopefully sooner)
• We have a goal to further reduce plastic usage in our warehouse
• Looking into how we can eliminate plastic from our products while still adhering to U.S. requirements for food companies
• We’re sourcing more and more spices from farmers who are closer to us to reduce our carbon shipping footprint

This list will evolve as we learn of more ways we can reduce waste and be a more sustainable business. It is a top priority for us. If you have any suggestions or questions, we’d love to hear them! Just reach out at pinch@pinchspicemarket.com.