Let's talk about waste!

We love growing tasty, nutrient-dense vegetables, and we like it even more that we can do this without destroying our soils, polluting our water courses or poisoning our air.  We can grow great veg AND bring life back to our soils, purify our water by filtering through our living soil sponge and keep harmful emissions to the atmosphere to a minimum (walking or cycling to collect your orders from our Pick-up-points is something you can do to keep emissions down).

We take waste and packaging issue seriously - we hate waste - we don't believe there should be ANY - just resource cycling.  We have a policy of avoiding plastic waste (we uste recyclable plastic boxes which are re-used many hundreds of times, and if they ever do get to the end of their life, we put them into recycling.  We avoid plastic bags and wrappings as far as we possible can.  The bags we pack our salad mixes in are 100% compostable.  Please collect these up, together with any of the glass containers you get with your orders, and return them to us in your empty boxes.  We will compost the biodegradable bags, and reuse the glass jars if at all possible, or else put them in recycling.  Please do not send us any packaging materials which did not come to you from Zsámboki Biokert - unfortunately, we don't have capacity to deal with other people's waste, but we do feel responsible for our own packaging materials.

If you want to be really put off plastic packaging materials, especially plastic liners and waterproofing materials get yourself informed on PFAs (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances), also known as "forever chemicals".   These are an aptly-named group of chemicals (thousands of them) which are very varied in their applications, but very resistant to break-down, very wide spread, and can be very harmful, even in small quantities.  Because they are so hard to break-down they bio-accumulate, which means that the pass up the food web, getting more concentrated.  They are in our food packaging, in our food in our water, on our clothes, in fire protection products, in medical products, they are the active formulation of non-stick pans (Teflon and Tefon), and generally nasty disruptors.  The best way to avoid PFAs is to use natural materials (wool and cotton), eat organic food, use tools and equipment which avoid special coatings.  In the world we live in it is pretty impossible to avoid PFAs completely, but it is possible to reduce your exposure through conscious choices.  Check out the film "Dark Waters" for more on the back story, and look for the upcoming film, also the new documentary on the 3M company, "How to poison a planet".