Is KoRo actually sustainable?
Why does KoRo use plastic packaging? What is KoRo doing for a better world? Why isn't everything organic at KoRo? We asked you what interests you most about sustainability at KoRo and our sustainability team has the answers for you here. The most frequently asked question was: Is KoRo actually sustainable? We want to answer this right away. Alongside passion, transparency, curiosity and integrity, sustainability is one of our five guiding values. It therefore plays a major role in all our decisions. We are aware of our responsibility as a company in the food sector, as food accounts for a third of global greenhouse gas emissions. However, sustainability has many facets. For example, with a 99% vegetarian and 80% vegan range and an organic product share of 47% (as of 03/2024), KoRo promotes the integration of more sustainable products into your daily life. Thanks to our bulk packs, we save on packaging waste compared to conventional retail pack sizes - on average 40% per 1kg of product. Nevertheless, we want to be completely transparent here: despite our efforts, we are not yet where we want to be at some points and there are other challenges along the way - some of which we discuss in more detail on this page. In some respects, KoRo may never fulfill some people's understanding of sustainability. We therefore do not want to call ourselves 100% sustainable or actively advertise ourselves with the buzzword ‘sustainability’. However, we want to continue to work on integrating more economic, ecological and social sustainability at KoRo and communicate transparently in this way. We take criticism and suggestions very seriously and engage in dialogue, as this is the only way we can continue to develop and integrate as many facets of sustainability as possible.
At KoRo we want to...
Reduce our Packaging Waste
Our large packages are part of our identity. This not only makes commerce easier and keeps you happy for longer, but also reduces packaging waste by a lot compared to conventional packaging sizes.
Have Smart Supply Chains
We think: there are often too many stops between a product and its origin. That's why we skip stages of the supply chain with our products. (More on this topic here)
Offer alternatives
We want to provide high-quality food at a fair price for your everyday life. We make sure that our products remain as natural as possible, contribute to a balanced, predominantly plant-based diet or that our snacks are a healthier and potentially more sustainable alternative.
Your questions about our suppliers and producers
We know that you are very interested in the origin of our products and that it should ideally be written on the products. The fact that this is not yet the case is due to a complicated internal process. The countries of origin of our products vary regularly, depending on where our suppliers source the products. Changing a label is not so easy and not so flexible with our current software. However, we are already working on having the origin of our products printed on the labels in the future. For this purpose, we want to switch to new software at the beginning of 2022, which will make it possible to change this information flexibly. You can already see all the information about the origin and the organic certification of the products on our website.
There are different suppliers with different certifications, we ourselves are IFS (International Featured Standard) certified. We work primarily with suppliers who meet the GFSI standard (Global Food Safety Initiative), as this is equivalent to the IFS. In exceptional cases, however, we also work with partners who are not subject to the GFSI standard. Due to our certification, we are obliged in such cases to independently inspect the non-certified farmers. For this purpose, the suppliers must submit an HACCP concept (hazard analysis and critical control points), and we also carry out a risk analysis. In the HACCP concept, suppliers indicate their risk assessment and what they do to reduce risks. For example, a risk could be the splintering of glass when filling products into glass containers. A risk analysis from our side can include, for example, inspections or laboratory tests directly at the farms. This year alone, we have had 17 laboratory analyses carried out.
In general, we ask all potential suppliers whether they and their sub-suppliers meet the minimum labour standards and core labour standards of the ILO (International Labour Organisation). In doing so, we rely primarily on trust and honesty. We cannot guarantee that the information provided to us by the supplier is 100% correct. The certification company of the GFSI is responsible for verifying compliance with the certification guidelines. There are certain products that we have to purchase from importers, as we are unable to purchase sufficient quantities directly from the producers. In these cases, the importers have all the necessary certifications, but we do not have 100% insight into their supply chains. In order to prevent this in the future, we are striving for even more direct supply channels and, as a company, want to go even further into the origin of the goods in order to obtain more information about the growing conditions on site. One example is the non-transparent supply chain for cashews. The market is dominated by a few very large cashew crackers (processors) from Vietnam who buy and crack the raw cashews very cheaply from Africa. The exporters are very secretive about the exact process of how the raw cashew is cracked. We have been looking at alternative supply chains for some time and are working on sourcing organic cashews from projects in Africa. This requires a lot of know-how and patience. However, these cashews will be much more expensive because of their organic quality and the bypassing of large processors. In the future, we want to offer both options in our shop (organic directly imported from Africa and non-organic imported from Vietnam), because we think that everyone should have access to high-quality food. After all, there is no difference in the quality of the products.
Your questions about our packaging:
Our priority is that the products arrive safely to your home. The packaging must protect your food well; the jargon for this is called "optimal barrier capability". If this is not the case, the product will deteriorate more quickly and, in the worst case, you will have to throw it away. A study from 2020 shows that packaging often helps to reduce food waste through its protective function. If this is the case, the 'environmental benefit' from avoided waste is usually 5 to 10 times higher than the 'environmental cost' of the packaging (1). Our goal is therefore to optimise our packaging for maximum food safety and an extension of the minimum shelf life. In many cases, only plastic packaging meets this requirement. Nuts, for example, are very fatty and would grease through and damage paper packaging in a short time. Contrary to its bad reputation, plastic is not necessarily the least sustainable packaging option. In fact, plastic only becomes a hazard when it enters the environment. 90% of our products are consumed at home and accordingly end up in household waste, which means they can be recycled afterwards. In this case, packaging made of a paper and aluminium combination would be much more difficult to recycle because it is a composite material. As you can see, this is a very complex issue where we have to take a close look at all the circumstances in order to find the optimal solution. In any case, you can be sure that we use as little packaging material as possible, if only for cost reasons. If you want to know more about packaging, listen to our KoRo Podcast. There we discuss all the myths and facts about packaging at KoRo.
Our packaging is neither recyclable nor compostable. As a food company, we are, as you can imagine, subject to strict guidelines regarding the hygiene and safety of packaging. We cannot easily use recycled plastic waste for food contact packaging. However, we are also aware of the fact that we can take a closer look at the topic of plastic recycling. We want to continue to pursue this idea together in the future.
In order for our packaging to meet the high demands of food safety, we have to work with stable materials. Both elasticity for space-saving transport and rigidity for product protection must be equally given in order to guarantee the longevity of our packaging. To achieve this, we use a plastic combination of PE and PET, especially for our stand-up pouches. As a general rule, only monoplastic can be 100% recycled. Composite plastic can only be 'downcycled' due to its properties - this means that the reprocessing does not correspond to the original quality and a devaluation takes place (for example, sports floors for playgrounds or sports halls are made from it). In our podcast episode on the topic of packaging, you can find out more interesting background information on the sustainable use of plastic packaging.
Answering this question is not so easy - if not impossible. Because the term sustainability is not uniformly defined. What requirements must sustainable packaging fulfil? An important rule when it comes to sustainable packaging is that composite materials (e.g. composites of paper and aluminium or paper and plastic such as Tetrapacks) are very difficult to recycle because the materials are bonded together. Packaging made of mono-materials is always easier to recycle. When assessing the sustainability of a package, the product it contains and the use life of the package after transport are the most relevant factors. It is clear that every packaging has its own individual optimum. Although paper is easy to recycle, it is usually not dense nor stable enough for food. Packaging such as plastic, on the other hand, is very light and saves transport costs. Glass causes significantly more transport costs than plastic or paper, but still performs better in terms of life cycle assessment (1) when used for a long time (we are talking about glass recycled up to 30 times). The production of aluminium cans requires a lot of energy, but the recyclability of aluminium is better. So there is no final and overarching answer for the most sustainable packaging. It is much more important to weigh up the possible packaging for each product and make individual decisions, taking into account all relevant factors (including quality preservation, food safety, costs and sustainability).
Living sustainably does not necessarily mean living plastic-free. Plastic is a stable, lightweight material and is well suited to transporting food from A to B without any loss of quality - as long as the probability of it ending up in the environment is very low. For us, the food safety of our products is clearly in the foreground. We cannot pack our nuts and dried fruits in paper only, as they are very fatty and the packaging could easily be damaged. Damaged packaging allows pathogenic bacteria to enter the food; your products would spoil faster and you would have to throw away a lot of food. Plastic packaging that ends up in the regular waste system can be recycled and can therefore also be an effective means against food waste. We want our products to arrive at your home safe, sound and fresh. As long as we can only guarantee this with plastic packaging, we cannot do without plastic.
We know that you take a certain risk when you buy products from us in bulk packs that you don't yet know whether you will like them. That's why we also offer you a selection of our products in smaller formats. We are not dogmatic about our packaging sizes and want to give you access to our products even if you don't want to buy bulk packs. Our individually wrapped snacks are designed for people on the go. You can easily take them and enjoy them wherever you are. We take the feedback from our community about our individually wrapped energy balls and the "questionable" extra bowl to heart. That's why we've already tried to produce our energy balls without a bowl, but we've had many complaints about crushed energy balls, leaking oil and more. We are already working on a better solution that will allow us to package the energy balls with less waste. By the way, the bowls are already made of biodegradable (compostable) bagasse. This is what is left over from the pressing of sugar cane.
Your questions about our products:
The producing countries vary depending on the product. We source products from all over the world and ultimately buy from where we find the best quality. The exact specifications on origin and production can be found on the respective product detail page on our website.
No. Even though a large part of our products are already organically grown or certified organic, a part of our portfolio is not. You can look up which products are specifically certified organic on our website by entering "organic" in the search field or by clicking on one of the tabs, e.g. "breakfast", and then filtering for "organic" in the properties. This will show you all the organic products in that category.
The main reason for this is simply the taste: we tested both conventional and organic nuts for the nut butters that we offer in conventional quality. We were more convinced by the taste of the conventional products. In the case of almonds, for example, conventional almonds have a much milder taste because their cultivation area is outside Europe. In the European cultivation areas (Italy, Portugal, Spain), the proportion of bitter almonds is higher, which are responsible for the bitter taste due to the traces of prussic acid they contain. Another reason for not offering our nut butters in organic quality is the significant price difference. As long as we remain competitive with products in organic quality, we offer them. It varies from product to product. We are not a company that only offers organic products and we want to offer high-quality food for every budget - that's why we go for the conventional and therefore cheaper option for some products.
Your questions about our products:
The producing countries vary depending on the product. We source products from all over the world and ultimately buy from where we find the best quality. The exact specifications on origin and production can be found on the respective product detail page on our website.
No. Even though a large part of our products are already organically grown or certified organic, a part of our portfolio is not. You can look up which products are specifically certified organic on our website by entering "organic" in the search field or by clicking on one of the tabs, e.g. "breakfast", and then filtering for "organic" in the properties. This will show you all the organic products in that category.
The main reason for this is simply the taste: we tested both conventional and organic nuts for the nut butters that we offer in conventional quality. We were more convinced by the taste of the conventional products. In the case of almonds, for example, conventional almonds have a much milder taste because their cultivation area is outside Europe. In the European cultivation areas (Italy, Portugal, Spain), the proportion of bitter almonds is higher, which are responsible for the bitter taste due to the traces of prussic acid they contain. Another reason for not offering our nut butters in organic quality is the significant price difference. As long as we remain competitive with products in organic quality, we offer them. It varies from product to product. We are not a company that only offers organic products and we want to offer high-quality food for every budget - that's why we go for the conventional and therefore cheaper option for some products.