Ethics Trading

Soap grows on trees! Anyone who has been reading here for any length of time or known me on forums, or even in real life, will know this already. So to manufacture soap nuts you need some land, a tree or several and a person able to harcest the berries when they dry. That’d be no waste going to landfill from the production process then.

There, soap berries, small and leathery and jam packed full of saponin (Soap) ready to wash anything you need cleaning from kids to clothes, and your car, windows, floor……

They grow a large, long lived tree which contributes to the carbon cycle, oxygen and water cycles as well as holding the soil together and preventing erosion and not even starting on the range of habitats a tree provides, and that is all before the tree even begins to fruit at 9 years old or so.

Once the tree begins to fruit the harvest cleans pretty much anything and all without chemical residue. Have you spotted any waste yet? The soap nuts are growing and being used and there’s NO WASTE! Compare that with a commercial washing powder – even a natural/eco friendly one – there’s a factory, there’s some waste, even if it’s minimised.

So, we want soap nuts in the UK. Now we have some fuel consumed and there’s pollution and waste involved there but it’s offset by using land freight where possible and consider the huge waste reduction up until now.

Right, I have soap nuts in my house and I sell them on through Ethics Trading and we’re back to minimum waste again.

I use paper bags to send out your soap nuts and these can be torn into your compost or put in your paper recycling. When you’ve used the soap nuts they can go in the compost or green/garden waste to be recycled. If any padding is needed in your order I either reuse packaging I’ve been sent or I use my own paper recycling that I’ve shredded.

The only waste I generate is the plastic mailing bag I send your order in
and I am currently hunting for a cheap alternative that will be watertight for the postal system here.

There’s as little rubbish generated as I can possibly manage at the moment and I’m always looking for ways to do even better.

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.