Our eco friendly product range has been carefully selected to provide sustainable and environmentally friendly alternatives to a lot of the wasteful and high impact products on the market. We will be constantly changing and adding to our eco shop as the months go on so if there is anything you think we should be stocking, please let us know through the contact form. Eco friendly products provide a sustainable, ethical, and low or no impact alternative to their mass produced counterparts that are often unnecessarily harmful to the environment. We live in a more eco aware society than we did even five years ago and as a result we now have access to organic, ethical, animal and environmentally friendly alternatives to almost everything we consume or use. Using eco-friendly or sustainable products is often the first, and is definitely the easiest step in going green. Our eco shop will focus on sustainable products that not only look and feel good but also work just as well as established varieties. Being ecologically aware no longer has to mean going without or settling for sub-standard goods or services. Our increased focus on climate change and environmental issues has encouraged many manufacturers to evolve and put as much thought and effort into eco and organic alternatives.
Our eco shop currently holds a range of body care, homeware, lifestyle, household cleaning, as well as energy and water saving products that have been carefully sourced and ethically produced. These products do not contain harmful ingredients and, where possible, any constituent parts are biodegradable, recyclable, or made from recycled or upcycled materials. We deal with suppliers whose manufacturing product development and testing processes are completely cruelty free meaning no people or animals are harmed. A lot of these new suppliers work hand in hand with endangered communities to establish sustainable production techniques that take advantage of sustainable or recycled materials and also benefit the locale.
'Sustainable' can be used as a bit of a casual buzzword - interchangeable with eco-friendly or green or environmentally conscious, etc etc. Strictly defined though, the standards for what makes a product sustainable are higher than for these other terms. Sustainability isn’t just about doing no harm to the environment in the present. It's about meeting the needs of the present without depleting resources for future generations. There are three main pillars to sustainability: economic, environmental and social (or: 'profit, planet and people'). Economically, businesses (like Quickcrop ourselves) need to make some kind of overall profit to be sustainable themselves. Environmentally, the planet's resources should be used in a way that doesn't compromise the needs of future generations. This means using renewable, reusable or biodegradable materials or inputs. Socially, businesses should contribute to the social good - for example by having good working practices and not exploiting labour, or by giving back to the community.
How does this relate to the products themselves? Well, a lot of claims are made about products being green, eco-friendly or 'natural'. Sometimes, there can be a degree of hot air to these claims; it might be technically true to say something is a 'natural' product, but the label might also be ignoring other inputs that go into the making of the product. 'Eco friendly' is a more reliable description, because there are regulations about what can be accurately called eco friendly. Having said that, take this for an example: you might have a product that's made from renewable materials and can be reused, so it won't end up in landfill. However, at the same time the production of this product may still be causing social or environmental harm, whether that's through excessive energy consumption or workers being paid lower than the minimum wage. This is the crux of sustainability: it takes into account the whole process that goes into making a product. Sustainability isn't really officially defined or 'verified' in the same way that 'eco friendly' is, so a good habit is to ask questions yourself: what materials go into the making of this product? Where did the materials originate? What is the overall ethos of the company or seller? Are they committed to the overall social good?
Eco Friendly Cleaning Products
There's no getting away from it: a lot of traditional cleaning products for the home and garden contain toxic, nasty ingredients. They're not necessarily going to kill you, but they're not great things to be exposed to over time. They can also be hazardous to pets, small children, birds or wild animals. Chemicals in washing up powders or detergents spread into waterways. Chemicals in garden or polytunnel cleaning products can harm plants, beneficial insects or cats. While no-one wants any of that, there's a misconception that natural or eco-friendly cleaning products are less effective. Studies have shown that this is not so, as long as you choose highly-rated eco friendly products.
We can give you some examples of our suppliers and their products. Bio D are a UK-based company that produce cleaning products made from ethically sourced ingredients. Their products include laundry liquids, fabric conditioners, toilet cleaners and washing up powders. Their core values include being vegan-friendly and cruelty free, and providing eco friendly products at affordable prices. The bottles are made from 100% recyclable packaging and the company provide refill stations. What's more, they manufacture their products using clean renewable energy - including solar panels.
Another example is our Citrox greenhouse and polytunnel disinfectant. This citrus-based product is 100% safe to use around your pets, children and plants (which are your children too!). It's a highly rated cleaner that fights fungal and bacterial diseases. As for Citrox themselves and their values of sustainability, they aim to source most of their goods locally, and if not they import by sea to try and keep their carbon footprint as low as possible.
Eco Friendly Household Products
We aim to provide eco friendly alternatives to a lot of the household products that you use day-to-day (or more occasionally). We stock kitchen utensils made from sustainable and ethically sourced bamboo and finished with food-safe organic oil; sustainable stainless steel lunchboxes, and biodegradable and reusable nappies. We also have a range of eco body care products. Many traditional body care products contain undesirable synthetic and man-made ingredients. Eco friendly body care products such as deodorants, soaps and oils aren't just better for the environment; the natural ingredients are skin-friendly and are less likely to cause reactions or skin allergies.
Making The Ethical Choice
When it comes to the products and services we consume, making an ethical choice easily becomes going green. Cruelty free products reduce our impact on animals and when we say one of our eco friendly products is vegan friendly, we don't mean vegans can eat it but that it has been produced with no animal products or by-products. Just as important is when something is sustainably sourced, this means choosing products from a supplier based on their social, ethical, and environmentally friendly practices. Choosing to buy and sell Fair Trade products lowers our historically detrimental impact on small artisans and family farms in developing countries. This allows artisans, farmers, and developing nations to sell their product or produce at a fair price and earn a fair wage for their work. Low or No Impact products are those created in such a way as to not harm as much as possible and even benefit the environment.
One of the drawbacks of purchasing online can be the excess packaging that the consumer is left with at the end of the day. We know of course that our products need to be well packed so they make their way to our customers in the same condition as they left our warehouse. Therefore we have developed new working practices in our warehouses that eliminate us from introducing any more plastic packaging into the supply chain while still providing the same level of product safety and security. We use recycled paper and cardboard creatively to ably protect our packages from damage caused by stacking, rough handling and harsh weather without the need for plastic, polystyrene or bubble wrap.