In order to be sustainable, we ensure that our ingredients:

• Are produced without the use of synthetic fertilizers or chemical pesticides and herbicides.
• Are cultivated in such a way as to help restore native ecosystems, prevent erosion and support water conservation.
• Use traditional permaculture systems and where possible are shade grown using native canopy species.

Appreciating our entwined existence with everything else – both the living and the seemingly non-living – means that creating a sustainable company with the least negative impact on our environment has always been really important to us. The farmers who grow our ingredients follow traditional permaculture systems where possible to help restore native ecosystems, prevent erosion and support water conservation. Naturally, this is achieved without the use of synthetic fertilisers or chemical pesticides and herbicides.

 
(image - Gubinge {aka Kakadu Plum} growing wild in the Kimberly)

Wildcraft

We have been working with wildcrafted foods for several years now, sourcing produce from indigenous groups in Mexico, Peru and Australia. Truly wildcrafted foods are beyond organic foods in many ways. We have however also seen the term wildcrafted used quite loosely and now we see the importance of developing standards – like the international organic standards – whereby wildcrafted operations can be audited to ensure that they are truly wildcrafted, using sustainable techniques. This is becoming more and more important with the growing consumer demand for such foods. An independent certification standard would protect consumers from being misled by non-transparent marketing campaigns and protect natural resources that are in demand from being abused.

We believe a truly wildcrafted operation has to be managed by indigenous communities in their traditional way of managing the land. When a product is wildcrafted in this way it is charged with the power of the traditional indigenous cultural practices. Although these vary widely between each ecosystem and culture, the general principles are the same: that the essential spirit of the product is honoured alongside the ecosystems in which they grow, thereby creating the highest quality product. 

 
(image - Our chocolate boxes are printed with vegetable inks on board with 97% post consumer recycled fibre. Our inner wrapper is home compostable & made using sustainably managed plant sources)

Packaging

We always try very hard to apply sustainable principles to our packaging as well.

The wrappers used to house our Chocolate & Luvju bars, despite looking like regular plastic, is actually compostable film made with renewable plant resources such as corn and wood cellulose. The decomposition of this packaging only occurs when it is placed in a composting environment, meaning an environment containing heat, water, oxygen, soil and micro-organisms. Our suppliers have verified that no heavy metals such as Lead, Cadmium, Mercury, Hexavalent Chromium, Antimony, Arsenic and Selenium are intentionally used in the manufacture of printing inks, which would potentially be harmful to worms.

Our chocolate boxes & Buckini boxes are made from post-consumer fibre with vegetable-based inks rather than the chemical stuff. This means we aren’t cutting down any new trees to make our boxes and no toxic chemicals are seeping into our water supplies because of harmful dyes.

The cans we use for products like Maca Powder and Drinking Chocolate, are made using recycled paper. The jars used for our Nut Butters & Superfoods are eternally recyclable (we use them to grow small succulents and as pencil holders on our desks!).

This is an ongoing process and our mission is to deliver our entire range of products in packaging that either a) decomposes and becomes compost food for plants or b) is able to be reused or recycled.

In terms of other aspects of the business, we use only recycled paper in the Loving Earth office and kitchen (and bathroom!). We do not use personalised business cards to avoid paper wastage.

Even the cushioning used to keep our products from being crushed in transit are selected with the environment in mind - the little white balls we use for packing is called ‘bio-fill’, which is made from corn-starch, which is compostable. When we use bubble wrap, it's made from 100% recycled plastic.