Helping out Environment
We are lucky enough to live and work in a beautiful part of the world and we are very aware that all our activities have some effect on the environment. We carry out an environmental assessment of all our activities on a regular basis and have done so for many years. We aim to reduce our environmental impact as much as possible and take positive actions to ensure that we are as sustainable as possible in everything we do.
Wherever possible we use plants grown in the UK, often grown to organic standards. In this way we are reducing travel distances, are able to see for ourselves the plants growing in the fields and also are helping with agricultural diversification in the British Isles. Some plants used in medicines and supplements may become rare or endangered and where a plant has been listed by CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) we will find an alternative and reformulate products so as to avoid using these species. We recently reformulated our Digestive Supplement Tablets to remove Golden Seal Root for this reason.
This catalogue is made from paper sourced from sustainable forests and certified by the Forest Stewardship Council, most of our literature is printed on paper like this, or part or fully recycled paper. We dispatch your goods in bags produced using a significant proportion of recycled material. We find ways to re-use paper whenever possible but when it has come to the end of its life, we shred all non-confidential paper and use it for packaging to protect products in transit or recycle it through our local community recycling enterprise along with cardboard and even plastic bottle tops. We are obliged by medicine regulations to use plastic tubs for our products but these are made of HDPE and so are recyclable. Even small things can help – we don’t use plastic or paper cups in our staff rooms but provide glasses which can be re-used; we use email whenever possible to communicate with customers and suppliers and we remind the recipient not to print it unless they really need to. By making people aware of what they do and its effect on the environment we hope to help change people’s actions through example.
We no longer send Christmas cards but instead make donations to a local and a national charity; this saves paper and benefits charitable organisations as well. We continually re-assess our environmental impact to find more ways to reduce waste, re-cycle and minimise our carbon footprint.
