Reducing our environmental impact is a major part of achieving our mission to change the world of pet food for good. From the energy we use, to our waste, our packaging, our supply chain and our ingredients, there’s work to be done and, for us, it’s about having a holistic, long term, approach.
85% of our packaging is currently recyclable when measured by weight. The main exception is your dog’s kibble bag. This bag does a big job, and it goes to every one of our customers; by making it recyclable we can have a significant positive impact. It hasn’t been the easiest challenge though, and I wanted to share our approach to getting the best packaging solution to meet the needs of our customers, their dogs and the planet.
The big bag challenge
It’s just a bag, right? Wrong – it has to keep your dog’s food fresh – plus you need to open and reseal it every day, it also needs to be strong enough to carry 10kg (that’s the same as a Westie!) and it has to travel well.
A material balance
We’ve looked at a number of different options to get us to the right material and had a lot to consider. Every material has a different effect on our carbon footprint and we’ve been looking at the whole supply chain of each material we consider. We also want to make recycling it – when our customers are done with it – as easy as possible.
For example, one of the key choices to weigh up was the impact of plastic .v. paper. When you’re dealing with food that contains fat – be it human or pet – paper must have an ‘interlining’ to deliver the contents fresh and intact. This interlining is bonded to the paper and, therefore it needs special technology to split it apart making it difficult to recycle. You can’t, for instance, put bonded paper in your average curbside or supermarket recycling point.
So where are we now?
We’ve been busy with new pilot trials – and testing new, recyclable packaging options. We test:
- Food quality with our nutrition and quality teams – to ensure the food is kept fresh in transit and in your homes
- Bag strength – so your dog’s food arrives in perfect condition
- Customer experience – what do you think?
Then we share all our results with our supplier so we can target any improvements.
Ease of recycling and the overall impact played a major part in our final selection of a single material substrate. This is a plastic, non-bonded material, which is easily recyclable and is now in testing with our customers.
The great news is that we successfully completed our third trial in November last year and saw some strong results in our test bag’s durability (you may have even received one – 1000s of our customers did!).
What’s next?
By the Spring we’ll go even bigger with our largest number of customers yet receiving a trial bag as we work to make it available to all.
It’s not a quick fix, but we are making rapid progress on getting our fully recyclable bag live for all our customers. More of this, later. Thanks for reading!
Recycling means a lot to me. We need more than ever to be looking after all animals and we have science to help with that. We can even look to options available before plastics because it once was never an option before
Very interesting blog post as always try to recycle as much as possible and I do feel a bit guilty at the end of the month putting a big bag into the bin. Could I ask you to look at the fastening though as I find the resealable strip gets weaker and weaker over the month. To be fair when it is opened twice a day it does have to take a lot of use but I end up just folding the bag over towards the middle of the month which obviously doesn’t keep the food as fresh. Our dog Seaton doesn’t seem to care though always eats it all.
Thank you for your feedback Wendy! We’re looking forward to you trying our new, recyclable bag 🙂
Great stuff! Actully i found a dogbed with foam made from plastic bottles https://bit.ly/3qrm2vH
Great, I’ll be keen to buy your product when the packaging quantity is lessened and recycleable.
Thanks for this post.
Amazing! 🙂
I love using reused products. Also for my dogs. I recently found this ordered this one shorturl.at/bjvE5 and are now looking into making myself some dog toys of reused materials. Food never came to mind before. I love the idea!
Thank you!
Not happy with the plastic bag. I decant my kibble into a storage container which I find easier to get the scoop into. I’d be happy with a paper ( or other recyclable ) bag.
Hi Maddie – we’re switching to recyclable bags as soon as possible 🙂
Really not a fan of food solely being stored in a plastic bag for my dog. I’m much more content when it comes to the foil lined bags. I wouldn’t eat my own food stored in a plastic bag for a month so why should my dog. I’m not convinced it’s stays as fresh as it should in addition to it not closing well. Bring back the foil bags – I have reused several in the last year and was very disappointed with the latest bag.
We’ve been testing out alternatives that are recyclable in the last few months – feedback is welcomed as it helps us make sure any changes we make are the right ones. I’ll pass this over to our team 🙂
Hey. I’m so pleased that you’re looking into recyclable bags. I received this months delivery in the new plastic bag, and whilst I’m dead keen for recyclable materials, this bag won’t stay closed/sealed. I literally try and seal it for 5 minutes and it seems sealed but as soon as I pick it up to Chuck back in the cupboard it opens. Now have to buy something to keep the kibble fresh.
Hi Ian – please could you email us at hello@tails.com so we can have a look into this and make sure your feedback is passed on, thanks!
Not happy with new bags, had these bags twice now, an definitely doesn’t keep food as fresh. I’m now buying my dogs food else where.
I’m sorry to hear that Jill – please email us at hello@tails.com so we can make sure your feedback is passed on.
Can I just comment on the issue of resealable bags that seems to be a common thread?
We receive the 10kg bags of dry kibble food for our dog (in the white plastic bag as we haven’t been part of the new bags trial) and once we’ve opened the bag, if it’s kept in a cool dry environment we find it doesn’t need to be resealed to keep it fresh.
I can understand the softer food types will need to be resealed but maybe you could start your change by rolling out a recyclable bag to your dry food customers?
Your bags are absolutely no use whatsoever, our delivery of dry food was pretty much emptied into the larger cardboard box the food is delivered in. The top and bottom seams had failed completely and clearly not up to the job. Might I suggest a rethink and look at using animal paper feed sacks, which are machine stitched top and bottom. Completely recyclable and the farming community have used them for many years without too many problems.
Plastic is still plastic at the end of the day and still difficult to recycle however you try dress up the process.
Thank you for your feedback Andrew, we’re working hard to try and improve the lives of dogs and their owners, and this means helping to ensure our packaging is fully recyclable too. We appreciate your suggestions and will certainly feedback to the team, but we thank you for your patience in the meantime – if you do need a replacement bag for your kibble our team would be happy to help, just pop us an email to hello@tails.com 🐾