This week’s $30 and $40 boxes feature lovely certified organic dill from York Town Organics –one of my favourite herbs, and something that goes rather nicely with quite a few items in this week’s boxes including beans, beetroot, tomatoes and fennel. If you look a little closer, however, the punnets the dill comes in are biodegradable, which is even better! Unfortunately the retail sector generally demands see-through packaging for lines that aren’t suitable for sale loose (e.g. berries, herbs) which has generally meant plastic, but it’s great to see that it’s possible to offer more environmentally friendly alternatives without losing the functionality. These alternatives are currently many times more expensive than the fossil-fuel based plastics traditionally used, which does make it hard for producers to make this transition – and until government action pushes the major supermarkets to phase out plastic packaging, which will increase demand for alternatives, it’s unlikely that the prices of alternatives will drop. We’re very much at the mercy of the supermarkets on this issue, who are the primary market for our larger growers and thus set the packaging standards, but where we can avoid using plastic without associated costs reducing the amount of food we’re including in your boxes we’ll always do this.
$30 boxes – for what may be the first time – include Elphin Grove’s baby corn this week. The whole cob can be eaten – please be careful removing the husk though as it’s quite easy to break them!
Fruit supplements this week include pears and strawberries – next week’s will probably be basically the same as at this stage we’re only able to access apples, pears and strawberries. Nothing wrong with that, but if you’re hoping for variety and would prefer to cancel your fruit supplement for the final week of the year (29th) please do let us know over the weekend.
