A Plastic-Free Sourdough Micro-bakery

A plastic free sourdough microbakery.

Can it be done?

I think yes, but we are not quite there yet.

Although our outflow is plastic free (un-packaged returnable crates of unwrapped or paper bagged sourdough), there remains some single use plastic lurking in our incoming supplies.

Plastic single use handle on Flour sack

Oil in recyclable 5l jugs

Cleaning product single use plastic

Semolina in single use plastic bags

Salt in recyclable 4kg bucket

So I’ve gone about identifying it, and thought about the next action (bold) as to going plastic free. Here goes:-

Stoates flour – all our flour comes in paper bags, apart from this little plastic handle sewn into the bags on Stoates 8kg sacks. Not big but we get thru quite a few sacks. Next step – we’re actually in a position to stop using Stoates, as we transition to Scottish only flour mills (Golspie and Mungoswells) – [seperate post to follow on this!]

Semolina flour – we use this sharp flour for dusting peels but alas the 5kg sacks come in plastic bags. Next step – hunt down a flour producer doing a sharp semolina type flour for dusting peels in a paper sack.

Salt – we use Isle of Sea Salt, which comes in 1kg plastic pouches. 1% of our doughs is salt, and after flour its the main cost ingredient.  Next step – start ordering larger 4kg tubs direct, and attempt to organise direct re-fills with producer.

Oil – we use Cullisse highland rapeseed oil, which comes in 5l jugs. The jugs are recyclable (and we do) but it would be better if we could get them refilled. Next step – contact producer and attempt to organise direct re-fills.

Cleaning products – worst offender here by far. We use Nisbets for ancillary cleaning items like paper towels and cleaning products. And everything ordered comes plastered in single use plastic. Next step – we might try a no paper towel environment (washing re-useable cloths instead) and see how it goes, and gradually toggle cleaning products over to Bio-D or similar which we can get refills locally of.