Sustainability

A search on Google defines sustainability, quite dryly, as ‘the avoidance of the depletion of natural resources in order to maintain an ecological balance’.

But what does that mean? And more specifically, what does that mean for us?
We don’t have to beat around the bush. People take from nature. It has always been that way. Originally people were hunter gatherers. We would hunt wild animals and gather edible roots, berries, and the like.
Later in our history, we became sedentary and started growing our own food and raising animals to feed ourselves. 
We would also chop trees for wood, mine ore etc.

These past few years there has been a lot of attention towards maintaining a balance, because we are slowly realizing that the earth has finite resources, and if we don’t manage them, we will run out.

When we started our business, one of our first questions was: How can we create sustainable products and maintain the equilibrium? 
Our answer is twofold. 

1. We want to source as many ingredients as we can locally. That often means paying a higher price for our ingredients. But we believe that we should support local businesses as much as possible and—if the quality is high enough—that they should receive a fair price. 
   One of our first conversations with a supplier went as follows: “We want to buy your apples. How much do you want for them?” He named his price and we agreed. He responded by saying: “You can get cheaper apples somewhere else. Why buy mine?” “Because we don’t want just any apples. We believe in the quality of your apples and we might want to buy other fruit from you in the future.” 
2. We want to create a fair exchange with nature. In our search for interesting ingredients we came across sloe (Prunus spinosa). Farmers used to use these thorny plants to create hedges to keep the cows in, with mixed results, which is why they switched to barbed wire after WWII. We want (and are going) to use the fruits in our mead. But the plant does so much more. The flowers attract all sorts of pollinators, which in turn will help to improve the biodiversity of the environment. Because of the thorny stems and the way the hedges grow, a lot of smaller birds love to make their nests in hedges. That too will help to improve biodiversity.
   And we don’t want to stop there. Our dream is to create different enclaves of biodiversity that we can use for our meads while we improve the biodiversity of the environment. 
   The first steps have been taken. Thanks to the generosity of the people of ‘La fille d’Oscar’ we have been able to plant our first 75 sloe plants last year. We’re also currently talking with someone in Landen to plant tall-stemmed apple trees.

However, we’re under no illusions. We know it takes at least 20 years before apple trees bear full fruit. But as Nelson Henderson said: “The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit. “

And in the meantime, we believe that if we can keep it up, we will reap some benefits. We’ve encountered some great people already and will continue to meet people who think like us. Who knows what collaborations will come out of them?

For us the conclusion is a simple one. We (people) can not continue taking. We cannot keep ordering ingredients from the other side of the world just because they are a little bit cheaper and not giving anything back to our environment. The trick is to find a way so we, as a company, and nature can both benefit. We just hope we can get our message across to enough people, because we are well aware that there are drawbacks. Customers have to be willing to pay and have to understand what they are paying for.