Organic Spotlight: Local Greens
Story
Local Greens is a not-for-profit, organic veg bag scheme operating out of the railway arches in Herne Hill. The inspiration for the initiative came from Growing Communities, an ethical organic veg box scheme and garden in Stoke Newington, established over 20 years ago. Co-founded by Jean and Therese, who wanted to provide their neighbourhood with organic and biodynamic seasonal vegetables gown as near as possible to South East London. With a commitment to their local community, any profits go to support local community projects.
Mission
Committed to ethical practices and paying their employees a living wage.
Local Greens ensure their produce offers maximum freshness with minimum food miles. Utilising The Growing Communities model, which inspired an initiative called Better Food Traders for ethical, sustainable food suppliers in London who aim to grow a resilient food system, built on the below principles:
- Ecological food and farming
- Transformative trade
- Building community
- Changing the big picture
What does the Future look like for Local Greens?
Continuing to support small-scale farming
Local Green’s continues to commit to selling veg grown by small-scale operations as this form of the short supply chain has environmental and social benefits.
Supporting low-income families
Local Greens is committed to supporting local food banks, with an incentive to support low-income families, where customers can donate their veg bag to Local Greens who take the veg bag to a local food bank instead of cancelling their order if they go on holiday.
Delivering surplus food to local Cooking classes
Local Greens also work with Living Platform in Loughborough Junction who provides cooking lessons and cooked meals for vulnerable people in the area.
Transition to go plastic-free
The future for Local Greens is to go plastic-free. Since 2018 the organisation has made significant steps to reduce their plastic packaging, moving the veg bags to 100% reusable, currently using pulp-packaging for fruit, and testing fully compostable packaging. However, they are working on getting the balance between preserving the quality of freshness of veg with non-permeable packaging e.g mixed salad, reducing the environmental impact.
You can find out more about Local Greens and order if you are local on their website.
