How We Reduce Our Environmental Impact At GOÜTER

Now you can have your cake and eat it, or rather have your chocolate snack and not feel guilty about the environmental costs. When we make GOÜTER, we don’t just formulate a delicious cluster (although this is as highly important!), we also want to ensure we are doing our bit for the planet. So, here’s how we make GOÜTER chocolate bites great for your tastebuds and the environment.

Upcycled Food Association

We have joined the Upcycled Food Association to show our commitment to reducing food waste by using surplus bread from manufacturers in our chocolate snack bites. If you’ve read our other article on food waste, [link another article] you’ll know just how shocking the figures are, with roughly 30% of all perfectly edible food going to waste every year. When you consider how many people don’t have access to enough food and water, this is a horrific number, but it also creates unnecessary Carbon emissions, which leads to environmental problems.

By joining the UFA, GOÜTER can collaborate with other like-minded companies to help tackle food waste head-on. Together, we recognize the power of collaboration in achieving our goal of reducing food waste while providing delicious, high-quality products for you to enjoy at home.

Horizon Program

The non-profit Cocoa Horizons Program focuses on improving cocoa farmer prosperity while simultaneously ensuring that the cocoa farms protect local children and nature. Our chocolate is made from beans that have been verified by the Cocoa Horizons initiative. Therefore, the beans are sourced sustainably, and the cocoa farmers are paid a fair wage. As smallholder farmers own most cocoa plantations, Cocoa Horizons can also offer them support and investment when needed.

Reducing Food Waste

Bread is one is the most wasted foods (along with fresh fruit and veg). In fact, up to 44% of bread made in the UK is wasted every year. By supporting us and other brands who embrace food waste, you can use your money to show the demand to inspire other food corporations to do the same.

• Read our blog post Seven easy ways to reduce your food waste to learn more about how you can reduce your food waste.

GOÜTER Nuts

We pride ourselves on using the best ingredients in our rich chocolate clusters. Nuts are one of our main ingredients (mostly almonds, pecans, and hazelnuts), which account for up to 40% of our clusters – far higher than the industry standard. We import our nuts from Europe (when possible) to reduce the environmental costs of transporting nuts from further afield. Despite this being more expensive than buying from overseas, it is worth it for us to know we have made every possible choice to reduce our company’s carbon emissions.

• Discover why nuts are such a superfood in our blog post The health benefits of eating nuts.

Plastic-Free Packaging & Production

Plastic, especially single-use plastic, is the single biggest offender when it comes to waste in landfills. After food, it accounts for over 18% of all landfill sites. Although a proportion of plastic can technically be recycled, it seldom is (more on this later). Here’s how we reduce our plastic use:

• 100% Compostable Paper Packaging

We’re proud to say we don’t use any plastics in our packaging or wrappers. Cardboard or paper packaging can often be coated in plastic film, but we only use 100% paper packaging. As a bonus, you can also put our packaging in your compost to feed your garden.

There is debate on the use of plastic vs. paper packaging. Although paper bags take slightly more energy and water to produce, this doesn’t look at the long-term implications of using plastic. Paper composts in just 2-6 weeks compared to the 1,000+ years it takes for plastics to decompose. We’re investing in the future by limiting plastic use and focussing on compostable paper materials for our wrappers.

• No Plastic Molds Are Used in Production

We like our bites perfectly imperfect. So, instead of using plastic molds to ensure they’re uniform, we don’t use any plastic in our production process at all. We want to ensure that, as well as having more eco-friendly packaging, we’re totally plastic-free behind closed doors.

Can’t We Just Recycle the Plastic or Let It Biodegrade?

The problem with plastic isn’t that it can’t be recycled or won’t biodegrade, but it’s the environmental implications of this. The energy and water needed to recycle plastics are so vast that many people argue which is the lesser of the two evils. Both options cause environmental issues, so it’s better to avoid using plastic wherever you can. This is why we have ensured all our products are packaged using 100% compostable paper.

Every material, even plastics, will eventually biodegrade. However, this relies on certain conditions being met, such as enough time and correct environmental conditions, which is why labeling plastic as biodegradable can be very misleading. Technically, many single-use plastics will degrade but the process can take years, so they’re no use to a compost heap and can cause many environmental problems while this process takes place.

The label ‘biodegradable’ refers to the item’s ability to degrade using specialized high-heat equipment, which most plastics never go through. Therefore, single-use plastics end up in landfills or, worse, in the oceans, where they take decades to break down. Even if they do break down in the environment, they leave a trail of microplastics behind. These microscopic fragments of plastic end up in our water systems, causing problems for wildlife and our ocean ecosystems.

What are you waiting for?

Now you know all about what we do at GOÜTER to ensure our business is sustainable. We do this by joining anti-food waste schemes, using rescued bread that would otherwise go to waste, reducing plastic use in production, and only using paper packaging. Each mouthful of our chocolate, nut, and bread bites might just taste that little bit sweeter now you know that the planet hasn’t had to pay a huge price.