Your organisation's purpose:
We hand-make a uniquely textured chocolate confectionery product to an old family recipe. Everything we make is vegan friendly, gluten-free and made with sustainability in mind. We want to make devilishly moreish products which don't cost the Earth; physically or metaphorically.
We do not want to focus on just one issue, but rather build our business slowly to address a variety of issues, and improve the on the status quo as best we can. This includes, but is not limited to, ingredients sourcing, packaging materials, waste management, employee welfare and community support.
What is your impact initiative?
Our Product:
All of our products are vegan friendly as standard. This reduces our environmental impact significantly by avoiding the use of high energy intensive and emitting animal products, in particular milk.
We source all of our ingredients from local distributors, as our ingredients are not traditionally found locally, this is the best way that we can reduce our carbon footprint. Where possible, we then use local suppliers such as with our lavandin essential oil and coffee roasters.
Products which are of major concern from a welfare and sustainability point of view, we make sure to source quality products with a well-established and trusted accreditation. For example our palm oil is RSPO Segregated Certified and our chocolate is UTZ certified.
Our Packaging:
When it comes to our Goupie boxes, they are completely recyclable. We have sourced a compostable PLA bag to house the chocolates in, and keep them fresh for longer. This enables us to reduce our food waste footprint without the use of plastic packaging. Our boxes and labels are made from FSC assured card and so are both recyclable and compostable.
In newer product ranges, we have opted to use infinitely recyclable tin packaging. This is durable and so allows us to create the option of a 'refill' on our website to further reduce the amount of packaging that customers need to buy. It is also widely recyclable in case customers choose not to follow the refill method.
Our Waste:
At Goupie, we look to waste as little as possible. Our ingredients buckets are reused by other local companies to make their own products, such as Cellar Head Brewery. Our card packaging is reused to house our outgoing deliveries and our label backing material is used to pack these deliveries to avoid damage and product waste.
Were we are not able to reuse our waste, we recycle it. Last year we signed up to a scheme to recycle our PPE equipment with ReFactory. This means that we now produce just one bag of waste every 2 weeks. This bag has also been reused from our ingredients!
Our Employees:
We are an accredited Living Wage Employer which means that we pay all of our employees and sub-contractors the REAL living wage. This wage is independently calculated from real prices and is above the National Living Wage set by the government.
We also enact a 30 hour week for employees, with a maximum of 6 hours in the factory itself, and allow a great deal of flexibility in hours. This has meant that employees are able to fit their working ours around their families and lifestyles. We are a women-led company, offering opportunities to many women getting back into the workplace after taking time off to raise families.
Training is also provided to employees, and their annual one-to-ones dictate in which direction the employees would like to take this. Annual courses are provided in food safety, first aid, pest control, etc.
Our Community:
We like to engage with our local community wherever possible. This means that we often donate prizes to local raffles and appear at local events with our products. We also sometimes offer a donation to various charities with our collections, for example we offered an NHS collection to raise money for NHS Charities Together during the pandemic.
The impact your initiative has had:
Swapping our PP bags to PLA bags in 2019 has meant that we've been able to keep over 100,000 individual plastic bags from being put into circulation which are only recyclable at certain collection points. Instead these bags are compostable and will be able to be broken down within 12 weeks under optimum conditions.
Reusing our buckets over the years has diverted over 120 plastic buckets a year from being recycled and instead, given them a second life to create more amazing local products.
Supporting RSPO Segregated Palm Oil supports the regulation of sustainably production, likewise for our other certified products.
Have you observed any direct benefits to your business or organisation as a result of the initiative?
In the most part, we have found cost increases from our initiatives. However, we are aware that our customers greatly appreciate the effort!
We have won a number of awards for our efforts: Ethical Business (Love Where We Live 2019), Sustainable Business (Taste of Kent 2021), Green Business (Times Local Awards 2023).
What category/categories does your initiative fall under?
- Food for Good - reducing food miles, local seasonal produce, plant-based & organic
- Reducing waste
- Ending deforestation
- Local job creation
- Equality and diversity
Address:
Unit 4 Spelmonden Farm, Goudhurst, Kent, TN17 1HE
Website:
Contact email address:
grace@goupie.co.uk
