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A Penny Price Aromatherapy we're always looking to make improvements to be more environmentally friendly, no task is too big and no change is too small to have an impact. With our sustainably sourced ingredients for our Vegan friendly and Cosmos approved products we are looking more closely at the four R's to make PPA as sustainable as possible.
Reduce our waste by switching to environmentally friendly packaging for all of our sustainably sourced products to live in.
Re-use as much packaging material that comes onto our site as possible, we also have a refill station for our local customers and visitors to enable them to do the same.
Recycle as much of our waste as possible, not just in the production of our products but in our daily office duties including a battery collection point and a crisp packet bin.
Replaceour plastics with a range of environmentally friendly alternatives which have been recycled, recyclable or have biodegradable properties. Here are some fascinating things that we're working on:
Our team here at Penny Price Aromatherapy has thought of many ways to help decrease the environmental impact our company has, from re-using packaging materials with ‘ugly box stickers’ to updating our policies to ensure we are sourcing our goods from reputable suppliers within the local area.
Ugly Box
We re-use shipping boxes we receive from our suppliers that are in good condition to send out our customer orders in and we let the customer know this by way of an ‘ugly box’ label. This reduces the amount of boxes we have to have manufactured for our customer orders and gives a second use to what would have been a ‘one-use’ item.
ECO Chippings
Chippings are used in all of the parcels we send out to customers to protect the products, these have normally been received in parcels from our suppliers, so this gives them a second use. Any chippings PPA may buy to add to these are starch based, 100% biodegradable and 100% compostable.
Shipping Bag
Our Bundles and boxed products are sent out in Eco-friendly shipping bags, an alternative to standard polythene mailing bags. Produced from sugar cane, the greenest material on the market, they are a fully recyclable 5 micron material making it an improved environmental solution and Carbon neutral – the carbon dioxide taken from the atmosphere in the growing process, offsets the carbon dioxide emitted through production and transport.
Paper Tape
Our parcels are sealed with self-adhesive paper tape which provides an excellent alternative to standard PP or PVC packaging tape. This paper tape is an effective environmentally friendly solution which is recyclable.
Paper Filling
We use repaper filling to void fill areas in your parcel, after carefully selecting the smallest box we can to reduce waste and transport space, this is made from 100% recycled material and is fully recyclable.
Jiffy Bags
Used for our smaller parcels these are made from 50% recycled materials, the paper is from responsible sources and they can be recycled.
Bubble wrap
Used for really delicate glass and overseas orders in moderation, this is Oxo-degradable bubble wrap and is a more environmentally friendly form of cushion packaging, which is 100% recyclable.
PPA moved into a specifically built new building in May 2014 to reduce our carbon footprint and increase our output opportunities &. we haven’t stopped there, we have made changes to our building and processes, to be as environmentally friendly as possible.
Paperless
We are constantly driving ourselves to make as many of the processes we carry out to be as paperless as possible. With office and manufacturing processes, as well as course notes for our students, all paper that we use is sustainably sourced, but if we don’t need to press print the rule is don’t!
Confidential Paperwork
Once the paperwork we do have to print is no-longer needed this is placed into a confidential bin, which is emptied just a few times a year due to our paperless policy, and collected for destruction. 100% of these destroyed documents are recycled and the material returns to be used as tissue paper.
Plastic Pallets
We no longer accept goods coming in on plastic pallets in a bid to discourage our suppliers from producing and using plastic as much as possible. Our hope is that black plastic pallets, which cannot be recycled or mended, will be fully replaced by our suppliers with repairable, re-useable, wooden pallets.
Led lighting
We are committed to ensuring reduced energy consumption by using LED lighting throughout our sites. LED lighting is fundamental in reducing the use of electricity as, depending on the type and output of the lighting unit, they are up to 80% more efficient.
Heat Panels
We have replaced our electric fan heaters in our reception area with heat panels, these not only reduced our carbon footprint but also made our working environment a happier and warmer place to be!
Penny Price Aromatherapy has always been conscious of the impact it is having on the environment – after all this is key in producing the finest quality of essential oils which we know and love so well - and forms the main basis of our company ethos. Below are just some of the more recent improvements we have made to our products and the services we provide, having ensured we have always used the most responsibly sourced options available to us throughout our company
history.
Naturally Farmed
All of our essential oils are naturally farmed without pesticides or insecticides and we take pride in our policy to not stock synthetic products. We do not use lanolin, synthetic perfumes or animal products in our vegan accredited, natural Aromatherapy Skincare or our blended creams. The pure nature of these products ensures they can all be used safely on the skin. Find our more on our page dedicated to our Naturally Farmed oils and Quality page.
Rosewood
There is much concern and quite rightly so, regarding the sustainability of rosewood essential oil from Brazil as the forests are diminishing and the availability of the oil is causing concern around the world. Penny Price Aromatherapy used to obtain rosewood essential oil from small distillation units in India, the next best place, and have had no supply problem there at all. However, in 2022 we made the decision to gradually replace Rosewood oil with Ho – which has many of the same properties and is very similar in its aroma – in all of our pre-blended oils and creams and to remove rosewood oil from general sale. Read our Blog on Ho here for more information.
Glass / Aluminium / PPE Changes
We are continually looking for improvements for our products and the services we provide, and as technology and availability have increased, we have been eager to ensure we are utilising this to our full potential. 2021 saw us move our carrier oils away from clear plastic PET bottles and into amber glass, and infinitely recyclable material, for our smaller sizes and into HDPE 2 which is widely recycled throughout the UK and has a higher PCR content than our previous bottle.
We have slowly been replacing our plastic jars with aluminium ones, or into glass with an aluminium lid, as this is an infinitely recyclable material which loses none of its strength or quality in the recycling process. Aluminium is the most abundant metallic element in Earth's crust and our new jars are a fully recyclable or re-usable.
Refill Station
From 2021 the Penny Price Aromatherapy shop has had its own re-fill station, a popular option for many of our local customers for re-filling their products with us. We have always re-filled bottles that customers have returned to us for them, but we hope to encourage this further by branching out to the local community too.
Crisp packets
We support the ‘Crisp Packet Project’ by having a special bin for our customers, students and team to use to discard their empty packets into. These are then sent to the charity who use them to make foil blankets which are distributed to the homeless.
Batteries & Ink cartridges.
We have a recycled batteries box, which, once full, is sent to a specialist recycling centre, and one for our ink cartridges if they are not re-fillable. We encourage our staff members to use these points for their own recycling needs, bringing in their used batteries from home to help make a difference.
Boxes for our oils
Our essential oils will be arriving in boxes from January 2022, this is due to new legal requirements on the information we need to display. These boxes have been responsibly sourced, a mixture of materials from FSC-certified forests, recycled materials, and/or FSC controlled wood, and are fully recyclable.
Local Area
Penny Price Aromatherapy has always supported small local businesses as part of its ethos since opening in 2003. This has also been a great environmental approach too, cutting down our carbon footprint for the receipt of goods or services as much as possible.
E-Learning in our Academy
E-Learning courses are now available from our prestigious Academy, our dedicated Designs team and Academy have been working in partnership to ensure the integrity and high standards of the education we offer are upheld. This has also massively reduced the amount of course notes which we print, the amount of parcels we send out from the training department, which are dispatched worldwide, and reduced our carbon footprint even further.
