Eco-friendly packaging new for lavender farm
Okanagan Lavender Farm is a small company making big change.
The farm has eschewed plastic in favour of sustainable and environmentally friendly containers made of wood chips for its line of lavender-infused hand and body lotions.
“Yes, it’s game-changing and life-changing packaging,” said Okanagan Lavender Farm owner Andrea McFadden.
“We feel good about doing this and so do our customers. And as more people and more companies realize there are alternatives to plastics we can all make this conscious shift away from damaging the planet.”
McFadden offered a tour for media Friday of the farm’s shop and introduced Rescue Hand & Body Salve ($27), Botanical Body Butter ($38), Lavender Hand & Body Salve ($25) and Calendala Body Butter ($40) in eyecatching beige and black 30-milliltre wood chip containers.
The containers are hard like plastic, but have a distinctive texture and particle fleck that indicates it’s definitely not plastic.
Plastic, especially single-use plastic, is an environmental enemy because it uses a lot of resources to make and transport, doesn’t break down when it's thrown out and clogs dumps and waterways. And to think Okanagan Lavender Farm’s move to woodchip containers all happened by accident.
Last February, McFadden attended a sustainable packaging show in Los Angeles and was initially disappointed because most of the containers were actually unsustainable plastic. However, at one of the show's seminars, the presenter was showing off these new containers made of wood chips by Finnish company Sulapac. After finding out no North American company did anything similar, McFadden contacted Sulapac.
It took months, because Sulapac is a startup company that's having a hard time keeping up with demand, but on Tuesday the first containers arrived in the Valley.
Okanagan Lavender Farm got busy right away, filling the containers with the lotions and getting them on the shop’s shelves and putting them up for sale at the online store at OkanaganLavender.com.
The salves and body lotions are made with fair-trade shea nut butter and essential oils of the lavender and thyme grown at the eightacre farm at 4380 Takla Rd. in Southeast Kelowna.
As oil-based products, they remain stable in the wood-chip containers for two years before the packaging starts to break down.
When all the lotion in the container is used, customers can reuse it for something else or compost it. Okanagan Lavender Farm also makes solid perfume and lip balm that comes in paper-based tubes from a U.S. company.
Sulapac is also coming out with wood-chip containers for food that the farm will use for the teas and culinary herbs it makes that are currently in aluminum tins.
However, the farm will have to continue to use glass for the syrups, sugars, botanical distilled waters and essential oils it makes until there is a more environmentally friendly alternative. The same goes for the skin toners that are in aluminum pump bottles.
McFadden said she hopes a local plastics extrusion moulding company picks up Sulapac's patented technology and starts making wood-chip containers Okanagan from Okanagan wood.
“That way our carbon footprint would be in the even less because we wouldn’t have to have the containers flown in from Finland,” she said.