Riverford Organic Farmers focuses on cutting carbon footprint

Riverford Organic Farmers urges its competitors to focus on cutting environmental impact as well as lowering plastic use.

Riverford Organic Farmers’ founder Guy Singh-Watson has been urging those in the food industry not to let the drive to lower plastic use distract them from ensuring their business is environmentally friendly as a whole.

Speaking to the BBC, he described the recent anti-plastic “fervour” as misguided and says that more focus should be placed on cutting down on our carbon footprints as a whole, rather than focusing on one particular thing. He worries that ‘demonising’ plastic could be detrimental to the effort to combat climate change, saying:

"The fervour - the almost religious fervour - of some of our customers in (being) anti-plastic can actually create problems. Plastic is not in itself an evil material, it is the fact that we use so much of it. The biggest environmental challenge facing our planet is climate change - and anything that distracts attention from that is potentially dangerous."

Riverford Organic Farmers produces and delivers more than 47,000 organic produce boxes across the UK every single week through its army of franchisees. The franchise is strongly focused on ethical business and supports charitable causes domestically and internationally, including the fight for sustainable palm oil.

The head of the organic food franchise , which is aiming to only use fully compostable plastic by 2020, warned that other packaging options such as paper can actually have a higher carbon footprint than plastic. He said that companies should avoid taking “a step in the wrong direction” by looking only at reducing their plastic use rather than looking into other important things such as using energy efficiently.

He highlighted that local authorities are failing to advise people on how to best recycle their plastic products, with more than 39 different recycling policies across the UK.