Our carbon footprint is getting smaller every day thanks to our sustainable approach on energy.

In January 2023 we had solar panels installed at our cake bakery (cakery?). During the winter months a third of the energy we now use each day comes directly from the sun and this is obviously much higher in the spring and summer. In the first month alone after installing the panels we saved over 3 tonnes of CO2 emissions.

Other initiatives for saving power include the way we regulate the temperature in the bakery, using evaporative cooling that uses only 15% of the energy compared to air conditioning. Due to the grade A insulation of the building, we also never need to heat the bakery during winter, instead recycling the heat generated by the ovens and other equipment.

We are dedicated to further reducing our environmental impact in all aspects of our business making decisions. Each time we buy a new piece of machinery, we consider its environmental credentials. For example, our stone-tile deck ovens save energy through extra insulation and have a stop-mechanism which enables the oven to isolate and switch off any deck that hasn’t been in use for a set period of time. They are also designed and built in Britain, therefore limiting the CO2 emissions related to shipping.

All of our lights are LEDs and many in the bakery are on motion sensors, in order to save power when they are not required.

Around 20 years ago we first installed tracking technology in our delivery vehicles. This allowed us to plan routes more effectively and therefore reduce the number of miles covered each day, helping to reduce our carbon footprint dramatically.

Our company cars are also all low-emission vehicles and we have three fully electric cars, with plans for more in the future.

Back in the day, Thomas George used to feed his pigs in the back garden any food waste from the bakery. Today we have much better solutions.

Any food that is wasted during production, or any product or ingredient that is rejected for quality or shelf-life reasons, is now collected once a week by a company called Geneco, who specialise in converting food waste into energy.  

The food waste is collected using their sustainably-powered vehicle, called the ‘Bio Bee’. The waste is then taken to their anaerobic digestion plant in Bristol and turned into biogas, which is used to generate renewable electricity or converted into domestic gas for local homes. The gas produced is also used to power the Bio-Bee, making it the UK’s first ‘self-powered’ refuse vehicle – one full bin can power the lorry for up to 25 miles. Any plastic packaging present in the waste is removed and used to produce sustainable electricity for local communities.

It doesn’t stop there though. The solid by-product of the anaerobic digestion process isn’t wasted, in fact it is nutrient-rich and therefore used as a sustainable biofertiliser for farms.

Paying to have our food waste converted in this way helps us to reduce our carbon footprint by several hundred kilos a month.

In our shops, any product that has not been sold by the end of the day is collected by users of an app called Too Good To Go, a certified B Corporation who in one year alone saved 328,000 tonnes of CO2 through their scheme.

Every year we donate tonnes of bread, buns and cake to support the local community, the homeless and the disadvantaged.

We’ve been working with the charity FareShare since 2007 when they first set up in Bristol and today are one of their longest standing local partners. As in most food industries, making the exact number of products needed can be tricky. Our orders are being placed up until the afternoon each day but we need to start producing before the final number is known. Once our customer order picking is completed, there are inevitably some products that are therefore not needed. Donating our surplus products to FareShare means it is being disposed of in the most sustainable way possible. A morning delivery of bread to their warehouse might be eaten that afternoon by a homeless person in a shelter, someone seeking help from a refugee charity, or a child at a Youth Club working in one of Bristol’s most deprived areas.

It’s not just surplus product that we donate to FareShare; we also send them any short-dated cakes and unwanted seasonal goods. In one year alone, we donate an average of 500 kgs of food, which is used to serve around 95 charities, making a total of 1,000 meals. This also in turn helps reduce our Co2 emissions by 2 tonnes each year.

As well as donating to FareShare, we also support local food banks and other charitable causes, such as Help Bristol’s Homeless. We also try to do our bit further afield where possible. For example, during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, we donated 2,745 Fruity Flapjacks to help feed Ukranian refugees crossing the border into Poland.

We’ve been buying local ingredients long before the idea of food miles was invented. Today we work with a number of great suppliers in the South West that share our ethos.

There’s more to bread than flour, but it’s a good place to start. If there’s one thing we’ve learnt it’s that local is best. Our flour is traditionally milled just a few miles away by Shipton Mill, using only the finest quality grain. This improves the mileage and carbon footprint of all of our products. We also choose to use white flour made exclusively from British Wheat, further reducing the environmental impact of this primary ingredient.

We buy British butter, rapeseed oil and sugar, all of which are staples in our products. Other key ingredients are sourced from Bako Western, a local supplier that work as a Co-operative to serve its members.

Any cheese used in our baked goods is sourced from a local award-winning farm based just six miles from the bakery. The Lyecross family have been making cheese here since 1952 and have a herd of over 1,200 dairy cattle roaming their lush pastures.

On the subject of cheese, the chutneys used in our savoury biscuits are made by Tracklements, another family business based just an hour away, and the sea salt is from the coast of Cornwall.

All the coffee sold in our shops comes from Extract, a Bristol based roastery with a strong sustainability ethic who also help train our baristas. If you have milk with your coffee, that comes from Chew Valley Dairy just a few miles down the road.

Sourcing locally doesn’t stop with ingredients. Our cardboard boxes are also from a local company and our printed packaging is supplied by Taylor Brothers in Bristol, an FSC accredited printer who we have been working with for years.

We hate wasting anything and that even includes the grass in the fields around the bakery…

Our bakery is lucky enough to sit among 4 acres of lush green fields with a selection of oak, ash and elm trees dotting the horizon. Rather than cutting the grass in these fields using fuel-guzzling mowers, we had a fence put up around the permitter of the building and car park to allow the farmer next door to keep his cows or sheep on the fields. This keeps the grass short and the animals fed; Thomas George would be proud. We also allow the grass in the fields to grow long during the autumn months, so the farmer can use the grass to make haybales, keeping our mooing neighbours well-fed during the winter.

There is a huge variety of wildlife in the area and we regularly spot owls, kestrels, rabbits, deer and other animals, especially at dusk. We restrict our working hours and delivery times allowed on site in order to minimise any disruption to these valued animals.

From reducing plastic to buying certified sustainable packaging, our mission to reduce our environmental impact continues.

Cardboard

Our boxes are all made locally and we have been recycling our waste cardboard since early 2008. Investing in cardboard bailers has helped to make our waste more compact for collection.

When it comes to designing packaging, we work with printers and card suppliers certified by the FSC in order to ensure their approach to sourcing materials is sustainable. Buying FSC accredited card means that the way the board is produced supports the banning of deforestation and the rights of the local community involved in the forestry, along with helping to preserve biodiversity. The inks used to print our packaging are non-toxic and vegetable based and any laminates are made from cellulose rather than plastic.

Plastic

Since December 2011 we have recycled all locally accepted plastic waste.

In February 2012 we started buying our rapeseed oil in pallecons, which provide us with 1000 litres of oil in one large tub. Previously this was bought in 15 litre plastic containers. The move to pallecons therefore cut our plastic packaging waste hugely, as one pallecon (which lasts around a week and a half) would have been worth 67 smaller tubs. The pallecons are collected and re-used once empty, which means less packaging and much less waste.

In 2019 we also started to buy our golden syrup in pallecons, replacing 172 plastic buckets with each order. In 2022 we re-designed our display boxes so that they would no longer need shrink-wrapping, saving a huge amount of plastic each year. We are also constantly trialling greener alternatives to polypropylene film for wrapping our products. The OPP we currently use is actually recyclable, it is no longer collected kerbside but can be taken to larger supermarkets for recycling.

The bread bags used in our shops for our artisan bread are made entirely from paper, including the window which is made from corn starch.

Paper

We have been recycling all of our flour bags for several decades and in 2013 also moved over to online invoicing, saving thousands of A4 sheets a year.

Finally, the printed kraft paper used in our shops and traybake boxes is produced by a company that plants 10 trees every time we order, thanks to a scheme set up by Eden Reforestation.