Yarrah: 100% recyclable packaging

Yarrah Organic Pet Foods are transitioning to 100% recyclable packaging
Look for the 100% recyclable logo on Yarrah packaging now!

We are delighted to announce that Yarrah Organic Pet Foods are transitioning to 100% recyclable packaging!

This means you can recycle the bags in the carrier bag recycling facilities at all major supermarkets.

The new recyclable bags are starting to appear on shelves in the UK already and they will be fully rolled out by summer 2021.

This has been in the works for a long time: Yarrah had to invent a new type of pet food bag to pull this off!

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Bamboo-zled: are bamboo pet products eco?

According to science, not all bamboo products are more sustainable than their non-bamboo alternatives. Shipping bamboo products over from China has a big environmental impact so the products need to be eco enough to mitigate that. Here’s some science and some bamboo pet products to consider!

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Frightening Fireworks

Do you get stressed? Well, so do your pets – but they communicate it differently. Unlike humans who shop, over eat, drink too much and shout at people when they or stressed (just me then?) dogs and cats have a very different language.

It’s especially important over the Halloween to new-years party period that we keep an eye out for the signs and symptoms of stress and provide support and treatment for out companion animals.

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The Objectives of Organic

Organic certification logo EUEver wondered “What’s the point Organic food?” It is about health? Or about the environment? Why should I buy Organic pet food, my pet can’t tell the difference… Well here is the lowdown: The Objectives of Organic!

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Northern Vegan Festival Twitter Competition Winners!

Following the Northern Vegan Festival, those who took their pets an ethical present home from our stall got the chance to enter our photo competition on Twitter. Here are our wonderful winners!

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Pets As Therapy: Healing Paws

We all know what a positive effect our pets can have on our lives. For some, letting those precious pets be a part of someone else’s life too, allows this wonderful charity to reach out to thousands of people each week, sharing the benefits of unconditional love and companionship that these wonderful animals can bring. This charity is Pets as Therapy – this week, Shep, our adorable rescue mutt, interviews them about what they do.

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Recycling for your Pet

Sasha with her recyclable ball

Joey and I are always looking for ways to be greener, but our pets can be really naughty when it comes to the environment. Sasha and Shep, the rescue dogs, were forever destroying their toys – to be fair to them, it’s not willful destruction… but the cats, well, ripping their little toy mice to bits is their absolute favorite thing! Before we set up Ethical Pets, we didn’t really know how to address these problems, we seemed to be endlessly throwing broken toys away and buying more, and the local pet shops sadly weren’t much help with our sustainability quest.

However, now we run Ethical Pets things are much simpler! In this article, we will take you on a whistle-stop tour of some of our recycled, up-cycled and recyclable pet favorites.

Toys

Pretty much all of the Ethical Pets toys are up-cycled, recycled or recyclable – and our pets just love them! The dogs, for example, love their super tough Zogoflex Toys, and we love them too, because we know that if they ever manage to wreck them, we can recycle it with ease (and get a free replacement!).

Also, the cats adore their little woolly mice, and we love them too, because they are up-cycled from reclaimed yarn (and with a charity donation to boot). Much greener than the average cat toy!

 

A eco-upcycled biodegradable food scoop with minimal, recycled and recyclable packaging - phew thats green!!!

Bowls, litter trays and food scoops.

Even things as basic as pet bowls can be totally eco-friendly – when we needed to get some new ones (because our old ones were too small) we bought some of the Ethical Pets Beco-Bowls, which are made from waste rice husks and sustainably grown bamboo. Up-cycling waste plant-matter like rice husks means the bowl is not only green to start off with (because its not made of plastic) but it will biodegrade in the garden when it’s old and ganky. Perfect 🙂 BecoThings make cat bowls, small-to-large bowls and large slow feed bowls, litter trays and scoops and food scoops too. Each time one of our long-serving (but not very green) plastic items needs replacing, we replace it with a BecoThing!

 

100% Recycled plastic bottle beds... cool... and comfy!

Beds

Our personal favorite recycled product range are the lovely soft beds: made from 100% recycled plastic (used plastic bottles) these beds are super soft as well as super eco 🙂 There are beds just the right size for cats, rabbits and smaller dogs, right up to the large and squishy giant mattress. Also, our eco Vet Bed is great for the car or for older dogs who need something warm and accessible.

Packaging

There are other things to consider too, for example, pet product packaging. The products we sell all come from companies with an eco mindset, so packaging is usually minimal and eco-friendly. As for our own packaging, you can see a full summary here, however, in short, its mostly re-used and/or recycled cardboard with a little degradable plastic and a little bubble wrap. As eco as we can for now (and always getting better!)

Summary

All in all, there are lots of recycled, up-cycled and recyclable products for your pets. Job well done eh?!

How green is your carbon tyre print?

science spot logoOne of our favourite books, How Bad are Bananas? By Mike Berners-Lee, has some sensational cycling facts. This month, subscribers to our newsletter get the chance to win a copy! You need to sign up for your chance to enter. When you get your newsletter, there will be a question in it, simply reply with the answer, and winners will be picked out of the hat! 🙂 Good luck!

Eco Facts

Our favourite fact is that it would be greener to drive a hummer than to cycle after eating air freighted asparagus! Checkout our cool graph below comparing a few bike fuels (food) to some other forms of transport.

Cycling to work

Another interesting fact is that a congested commute in an average car comes in at 2200g CO2e per mile. This is much much worse than normal driving – almost as bad as your air freighted asparagus mile. So, the lesson is that cycling to work is a serious planet saver… so long as you don’t eat asparagus out of season for breakfast!

Food and Carbon Footprints

The carbon footprint of food is always interesting to us at Ethical Pets, with folk claiming we should eat our pets to save the planet, we think its important to show pets can be green too.

In the graph you can see that veg isn’t always greener, but that in general, meat is much more carbon heavy that veg. The same trend is clear in the rest of the book, for example, we learned that a 4 ounce steak makes more carbon than a 6.5 kg bag of carrots! Or, for the same carbon as a 2 kg leg of lamb, you could eat milky porridge every day for 4 whole months. Oats, wheat and even naughty old rice are much lower in carbon than any meat.

Pet Food: good and green!

We know that veggie pet food can be healthy, but apparently is very green too! So, if your dog or cat were going to cycle, a little Yarrah or Benevo would be the ideal fuel to choose!