When starting up Katie’s Tonix we wanted to make sure we did everything in the most environmentally conscious way possible.

I’ve worked in so many food places over the past 10+ years and with exceptions, many had terrible ethics in terms of environmental impact. Often, although they were organic and served healthy food, used a lot of plastic and single use packaging, which just broke my heart. I didn’t understand how people could care about their own health but not the health of our planet too. I believe both are interconnected, so this didn’t make sense to me. Maybe it’s different now, I hope so - I definitely think more people are conscious of the environmental crises we are in and so I believe most people are trying to make an effort to do their bit.

So for Katie’s Tonix we really strive to have as little environmental impact as we can, for example we use locally sourced organic ingredients. Anyone that knows us, knows we’re ‘organic freaks’, but we really believe in organic food and drink – not just for us but equally for the environment – organic food is free from harmful pesticides and chemicals that kill many insects that are an essential part of the ecosystem and cause detrimental harm to the soil, fields and nature surrounding.

Read more about organic in our ‘ethos’ section of our website or visit www.soilassociation.org/organic-living/what-is-organic/ which is our organic certifying body.

We deliver by hand - on foot or bike where possible, we have sourced stickers made from 100% recycled material and we use glass bottles.

The glass bottles can be recycled, although this helps prevent waste, the glass recycling process uses a lot of energy and so our aim is to re-use the bottles over and over again.

Thus our bottle return scheme was born:

Customers will receive 30p when bringing the used bottles back to the shop they bought them. We then refund shops directly when we do the next delivery. The bottles are then clean, sterilised and prepared for use again.

This is not a new idea, this is something that happens all over the world. In many countries, especially poorer countries, once you’ve drunk it you give the bottle back and it goes back to the company for re-use. Why doesn’t this happen in England and in most of the West…?

But let’s start with what we can do.

Many shops we supply have agreed to this scheme, which is really encouraging and exciting.

A couple more things we have in the pipeline:

• A 500ml size bottle should be out next week. This is more cost effective and reduces packaging – yay
• Giving our food waste to a local biodynamic farm for their pigs…
• We are working on setting up a charity to incorporate into this… watch this space

Please let us know if you have any suggestions or tips ☺

Katie and Francis xx