Zen and the Art of Packaging

It’s a wrap!

We’ve spent quite a bit of time considering how best to package our chocolates. There are 3 factors:

Fit for purpose

Whatever packaging we use, it needs to be robust enough to contain your chocolates (rather than having them rampaging across the country) and get them to you in as good a condition as possible.

Environmental footprint

We need to consider the whole lifecycle of the packaging. From its production through to the potential re–use, recycling and/or de–composition.

Aesthetic

Although we’re not great believers in form over content, we’re not quite so naive as to believe that form doesn’t matter. In fact, given the area of the market we are in, and that our chocolates will often be given as gifts, the packaging and presentation become a really important factor… for some, more important than the chocolates themselves! Consequently, the look, feel and style of our packaging are significant considerations.

We spoke to numerous agencies for advice. Some of them were helpful whilst others were hopeless and completely failed to grasp the point… but we’ll save that rant for another occasion.

The winners are

In prime position

To our surprise metal tins emerged as a very good option… they afforded good and hygienic protection to the chocolates, whilst having great potential for reuse.

Just think of all those screws, washers, nails and earrings you’ll be able to file by shape and size into individual tins. What better justification could you have for the odd chocolala than finding a proper home for your spare 3" Self Tapping Countersunk Cross Recessed No. 8 screws?

And should you, your friends and neighbours ever be fully replete on the tin front — is that possible? — they can be easily recycled via domestic recycling schemes.

And even for the odd tin that somehow slips into the general rubbish, being magnetic, there is still a possibility of reclamation.

On the aesthetic front, the tins also have a certain appeal… simple, whilst being stylish and sexy. If only we could say the same about ourselves

On the outside…

The tins are fairly lightweight and not robust enough to go through the post without additional protection. Consequently they are sent to you in a secondary corrugated card box.

These are made of 100% recycled card, folded into shape without the use of glue or staples. They can be easily recycled or composted, so please try not to put them into the general rubbish to be sent to landfill.

…And sneaking through on the inside

Within the tin box there is a layer of aluminium foil, and some of the chocolates are also individually wrapped in foil. Once again, you may find ways of re–using it(?!), but it is also highly recyclable.

If your domestic recycling scheme doesn’t take aluminium foil, there are other charities and agencies that do.

NB… to recycle foil it helps for it to be clean. So it would be useful if you could be thorough (…somehow!?…) in removing all traces of chocolate.

There are also various bits of paper used for wrapping, protection, or writing on. It’s all 100% recycled and can be reused, recycled or composted.

Finally, we try not send you loads of packaging to create the impression that you’ve bought much more than you actually have. In fact we tend to head in the opposite direction. We don’t use any internal spacers or padding between chocolates, and instead we carefully pack them as tightly as we can. Although this means that the chocolates are slightly more vulnerable, you do get more chocolate, less packaging, and it’s like opening a treasure chest!

More about us and our ethics