Packaging. When working with earth, a side mission becomes to rid oneself of our nouveau addiction to plastic. Here’s sharing our packaging practices…

We wrap fresh herbs, greens, berries in the leaves of indigenous trees, e.g., teak and fig, both solid leaves that hold for the purpose of transport. They also keep the produce extremely fresh, being of nature. Nature provides plenty of tie (e.g., sorrel stem, banana stem). For loose stuff (grains and powders), we reuse glass bottles/jars after sterilization. Fruits are loose in cloth bags. Newspaper is one of our last resorts, to avoid the leaching of printing ink into our food.

No, we’re no saint. We’re not entirely off land either. Our preserves and tisanes live in glass. But here’s the key to the thought process… While each industry comes with it’s own dirty history, think of the product’s lifecycle load on the ecosys, that is, during growth, to process, it’s reusability, it’s recyclabilty, as also it’s end-of-life disposal.

A US EPA initiative that bodes well in this matter: Refuse > Reduce > Reuse > Recycle

Farm to fork – Herbs packaged in indigenous leaves

Herbs were harvested Friday morning. They traveled 6 hours via public transportation, on a glorious Indian summer day. They lived in the refrigerator upon receipt, in their original packaging. This photo was taken 2 days later, Sunday afternoon.

Toor Dal packaged in glass bottles, re-used after sterilizing