What's Eco Honey?

It's the question we get asked all the time - what makes it Eco? The truth is - there isn't a set answer to explain just what it is that makes it New Zealand Eco Honey. Our goal from the time our eldest was at kindergarten and we were beginning our own beekeeping journey was how can we change what the 'standard' practice is to leave less of a footprint on the environment? We can't change the world overnight, heck we wont be able to make enough of a difference in a life time, but we can do our bit.

So for us it was changing the way we operated - two of the most significant changes we made was to tighten up the circle of where our hives were placed. We used to have some hives that required us to drive 6 hours each way just to reach them, they brought back a fantastic grade of Manuka Honey but also left a huge footprint behind. These days, every single on of our hives can be reached in 40 minutes - that's not the drive along the sealed road before we start going up and down the farm tracks, that's from our front gate to beehive in 40 minutes! Then we narrowed down even further - if we couldn't visit multiple sites in a 'circuit' we needed to really look into if that was a viable option or not for us moving forward. 

The other massive change we implemented almost instantly following one of our standard bedtime conversations with our son - who by this stage was very concerned about the impact of cling film on Papatuanuku was to make every retail ready container of honey in something that wasn't plastic.

We wanted New Zealand Eco Honey to be a brand that kiwi families would have in the cupboard for everyday use, not hidden away for when they were sick, so we settled on having two large sized containers - bigger than the usual 600g and 1.2kg - making sure each family can get that little bit extra! 

So I guess, in a nutshell - we called it New Zealand Eco Honey for so many reasons, it's eco on the environment, it's eco packaging and it's eco on the wallet!