Our sustainability efforts

Very close to my heart these days is being as low waste as we possibly can in the shop. It's tough - we receive a lot of soft plastic - but one worth the effort. I've always used paper bags for purchases, and will continue to do so. However we welcome your reusable bags with wide open arms!

One effect of this is on packing online orders. I've stopped having stickers printed to seal paper bags with and pop on the outside of parcels. They look great, but produce unnecessary waste. 

Instead we're reusing cello bags our stock arrives in as much as possible, so it's no longer a single use product. We've been tying paper bags up with yarn and stopped sending chocolates that come in plastic wrappers. 

We've also been using R3pack recycled and recyclable courier bags, which come in a rather fetching dark grey. I opted for these over the compostable ones, as not all of us have access to compost, but it's reasonably simple to pop them in a soft plastic recycling bin at the supermarket. Heavy duty paper mail bags are an option, but we'd have to import them ourselves which defeats the purpose somewhat.

Being environmentally conscious means using less packaging, reusing where we can, and slowly tweaking things. It all may seem like small actions, but they add up when we all choose to make them. I'm hugely aware that we consume resources as a retailer and that has an impact on the world around us, so will continue to work towards reducing our waste and learning more about how to make positive changes to the way we run things here at Holland Road Yarn Co. It may mean our 'unboxing' experience is less flashy than others, but i'm ok with that if it leads to less going to landfills and floating around in our beautiful landscape.