Over the last few decades consumerism has grown dramatically and with that comes more waste, and with more waste comes more disposal. It is only the last two decades that have seen good initiatives to address sending all our rubbish to landfill, which as we all know is an ecological nightmare. We here at LeeGreens thought that you, dear customer, would like to see exactly what we do with ours.
When our fabulous produce arrives, from locally sourced farmers,
Our dedicated team of packers sort out the fruit & veg and bag & tag them up ready for delivery, from this we are mainly left with cardboard boxes, paper potato sacks, onion bags & wooden crates.
During this process the packers will also quality control the produce and any not deemed fit for our discerning customers is put into the compost box.
The cardboard boxes, wooden crates, potato sacks etc., are returned to our farmers but not always. During the pandemic this has not been possible so we use our Recycling Company – First Mile Recycling, who are a fantastic team that roam within the M25 area in a van picking up recycling which has been prepared for them and left outside premises at an agreed time.
They recycle all our cardboard & paper with pre-paid stickers per 5 kilo of waste, and for plastics and single use plastics they take away in a clear sack. The wooden crates are slightly more tricky if the Farmers cannot take them, so we offer them up to our customers first (to collect at Leegate between 5pm &7pm) lots of you have allotments and utilise the crates for your own produce. Any leftover go on to social media for local gardening groups.
The aforementioned spoiled fruit and veg, of which there isn’t usually much, is taken by members of our packing team, many of whom have allotments and they use it in their composters. Finally, when our drivers return from delivering to our pick-up points they bring back the bags and tags that you, our lovely customers, return to us & we re-use them for the following week’s pack. These bags can last for several months and when they are no longer usable we recycle them too.
I hope that this little insight into our recycling protocol was (slightly) interesting and please remember if you are in need of any wooden crates or cardboard boxes we will happily save them for you.
See you soon
Michael Simmons, Recycling Rep
