21 March 2025

Steenbergs Environmental Impact Report - 2024

• Steenbergs,
• climate emergency,
• biodiversity emergency,
• rainwater harvesting,
• woodland creation,
• BCorp,
• impact report

2024 got there in the end with sales equalling those in 2023, but costs remain high and somewhat difficult. Steenbergs has reduced its environmental impact, by cutting water use and waste and has continued to reduce its electricity use, but carbon costs from electricity were still impacting from one energy supplier. We are carbon neutral and zero waste to landfill.

Since we began in 2003, Sophie and Axel have been committed to running a small business in herbs, spices, and flavours, with people and the planet at its core. Since the outset, we have been pioneers in organic and Fairtrade spices, and have operated as a business where everyone is paid the same and everyone has hands-on involvement. We are already carbon net zero in our business, have been zero waste to landfill for over 10 years, so now we have moved to the next stage of a deeper greening of our business.

During 2022, we became BCorp, adding this to our other ethical and environmental certifications and processes – organic, Fairtrade, SEDEX and the BS8555 environmental standard. Whereas it may not have an immediate impact on how we do business, as this is already baked into our own ethics, it has provided a new spin on the concept of running a business in a good way which is good for our people and our planet.

In 2024, sales did not see any growth and were £1.3 million as in 2023, but costs have remained difficult with staff costs, raw materials and packaging continuing to increase above inflation and services are increasing even more rapidly. Energy and logistics costs remain key issues for us. It has proved difficult fully to pass on these costs to our customers.

Disappointingly, there continues to be a relative lack of interest in ethical products – we have been here before and trends come and go – and almost no political will to address the issues of climate, biodiversity and waste. There was hope but this has gone and there’s perhaps little chance of a change in attitude with the current ‘drill, baby, drill’ mantra of the US government and the major oil businesses. We cannot see the climate and biodiversity emergencies will be met at the global scale, but we’ll continue to soldier on regardless.

BCORP SCORES

We applied to BCorp in 2019 but, because of the Covid pandemic, we did not achieve certification till May 2022. Our BCorp Scores were:

Whereas we do want to improve all our scores, the Workers score is our main target for our 2025 recertification.

HOW WE DID IN 2024

ENVIRONMENTAL

CARBON

We recognise that there is a climate emergency caused by human activities. Our objective is to reduce our carbon emissions in line with climate science and a 1.5C target, and to achieve net-zero by 2030 by removing residual CO2e. The aim is to decouple our business from increasing carbon emissions and to provide our customers low carbon intensity products. This begins with being focused on plant products – everything is vegetarian and vegan.

To achieve this, we have calculated how to achieve this and set our first objective to reduce our direct carbon costs to zero by end 2025. We define ‘direct carbon costs’ as Scope 1, Scope 2, and controllable Scope 3 emissions (travel, sewerage, waste). We set our carbon targets in 2018, with 2016 as the baseline:

In 2024, our scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions after carbon offsetting were 0 tonnes CO2e, and direct carbon costs were 0 tonnes CO2e in Scope 3. These are down from about 14 tonnes CO2e in 2016 and unchanged from 2023. One of our energy suppliers embarrassed us in 2022 by switching from a zero-carbon mix to one that includes coal and gas – we’re locked in until end Q1 2026 – so we are currently having to offset residual carbon costs of 888kg CO2e from British Gas via Climatecare.

On a more positive note, we have reduced our controllable CO2e before offsetting by -94% over the period 2017 – 2024, which we think is pretty good. Over the same period, we have been a net carbon sink of about -64 tonnes CO2e, i.e., we’ve theoretically captured at least that amount through our wood in Wales and via formal carbon offsetting with Climatecare. It’s really a bit more than that as we’ve excluded the 12,500 tonnes that the Woodland Creation Project will achieve through its lifecycle which were sold on.

However, to be clear, this does not meet the requirements of a net zero pathway because, for this, you must include all costs consequent on your business, including transport in and out, cooking and making cups of tea by the end user, and the costs of disposing of packaging and product. We’re looking at the practicalities and costing of getting a full carbon costing for Steenbergs carried out, but the costs seem very expensive, plus we’ve not yet found anyone willing to engage with us on this, despite reaching out to a few service providers. We’re probably just too small.

The key Scope 3 carbon impacts from our products are transport in and out and the carbon impact of cooking and making your cups of tea. These carbon costs are not genuinely controllable by us and the only way of reducing these costs by the 90% to hit net zero by 2050 is to literally stop folk cooking, making cups of tea and for us to stop trading, which seems a somewhat pointless strategy! The basic problem is tough, but this is compounded by the fact that you’re not allowed to include carbon offsets to get to this 90% figure. So, the question is how can we reduce the carbon costs from transport, shipping, cooking, etc., without literally packing it in? We’re not sure that folk have understood the real consequences of setting these targets – it will need a lot of sacrifices by end-users and businesses to get there. We’ll leave the practical solutions to this to people who are much cleverer than us, but we don’t see how things can be made, moved around and sold without some impacts – humanity cannot live in a solely artificial and virtual space.

So, we’ve decided on a different tack and will try and address our impacts in a staged way. The next objective is to tackle the carbon costs from distribution (our indirect Scope 3 emissions), and this is the new focus of our environmental plans. We have set the target of net-zero by 2030 for Scope 3 emissions by reducing direct carbon costs from deliveries and removing any residual CO2e through carbon offsetting.

As we rely on transport to get our organic spices to our customers, we have a responsibility to help reduce the carbon footprint of distribution. The main way we keep our carbon intensity down is that we have no distribution vehicles and only use grouped deliveries through couriers and pallet networks, so carbon costs are shared across many deliveries, the distributors optimize their routing and empty vehicles are kept as close to nil as possible.

We have reduced the carbon costs of package deliveries as low as we can, using the Royal Mail and DPD. Royal Mail has the lowest direct carbon footprint at 200 g CO2e per packet (even this has nudged up from 198 g CO2e), and DPD is net carbon zero per packet; both have electric vehicles within their fleet. We’re working with our palletised logistics partners on how to reduce carbon emissions in the UK, but these remain carbon generators.

Our target for 2025 is to calculate the CO2e for our freight to trade customers and offset those climate costs at the 2025 year-end. Thereafter, we will look to including goods inwards into these calculations.

WATER

Our objective is to minimize the use of water within the business, and we have set ourselves the target of reducing water usage by 25% by end 2025.

This reduction in water use has been through better water management which resulted in a further -1% reduction between 2023 and 2024. Most of the reduction came from the installation of rainwater harvested water for the toilets in 6 Hallikeld Close in 2022. Since 2016, water use was down -19% at 99,350 litres (2016: 123,151 litres).

We’re progressing with installing rainwater harvesting at 11 Hallikeld Close to get us towards our targets. The current issue is that we’re trying to source insulated pipework that will work for our set-up here.

At the woods, we take water very, very seriously, because one of its key attributes is its ability to filter the water that flows across the land and to reduce flooding by holding back water in the soil and the trees. So, we have a monitoring program to check water quality and dipwells to monitor water movements through the land, particularly suitability for fenland restoration, and will be installing water level monitoring equipment for one of the becks in July 2025 – an Aquaread Absolute LeveLine and Barometer kit; for the dipwells, we use a Solinst Level Logger and Barometer system.

Our target for 2025 is to install rainwater harvesting in 11 Hallikeld Close.

WASTE

We recognize that one of the biggest impacts we have relates to the waste we generate here in our factories and the waste that our products create. Our objective is to reduce the waste here and to reduce the amount of plastic within our business. We apply the reuse – recycle – energy recovery hierarchy as the basis for decisions on waste.

Steenbergs’ annual waste was 5.0 tonnes in 2024, which was down -6% from 2023 and -54% from 2016 (11.7 tonnes). 40% is recycled, 60% is waste-to-energy, and 0% to landfill. This was slightly worse than 2023 because we had an accumulation of broken pallets that needed to be disposed of via waste-to-energy; strictly, these pallets were from 2022 – 2024 but had piled up in our yard.

In terms of Steenbergs, we are zero waste to landfill and have been zero waste to landfill since 2010. All our internally generated cardboard, paper, glass and metal is recycled by Yorwaste at Harewood Whin. All non-recyclable waste (trade waste) is collected by Yorwaste and used as feedstock for energy at the Allerton Park Waste Recovery Plant, which supplies energy to about 40,000 homes. In addition, hair nets, plastic arm covers, plastic film and our employees’ crisp packets, etc. are recycled by Terracycle. In terms of plastic within Steenbergs, plastic sacks and blue drums that have been in contact with spices, etc., go through trade waste, but the clear drums for extracts are washed and then recycled.

Wooden pallets are reused pallets either purchased from a local pallet firm or from deliveries that we receive. As above, we had to dispose via waste-to-energy a few skips of broken pallets in 2024. We reuse most of our excess cardboard packaging as protective packaging in delivery boxes to retail customers; we simply break down transit boxes for deliveries, cut these down to convenient shapes and sizes, then use them in place of loose fill.

In terms of our products and packaging, we use materials that have as little plastic in them as possible, use sustainable materials and include as much recycled materials as possible. We monitor these and seek to reduce the level of virgin materials as far as possible.

The core of our range is packed in glass. The glass has 50 – 60% recycled content. The lids do not contain any recycled content. Both the glass and lids can be reused, or they can be recycled in kerbside recycling.

During 2024, we provided smaller sizes of bulk product in paper bags that are compostable. This does not cover all spices as some of them do require a plastic barrier for protection against water damage from the air, for example garlic and onion powders which are both hygroscopic, so these are packed in plastic bags that cannot be recycled. However, our supplier went into administration and the new owners are not manufacturing the previous product. We are currently in discussions with a few businesses that may be able to provide us with an alternative paper-based packaging, so please bear with us in the short term whilst we sort ourselves out.

We do pack teas, stuffings and mulled spices products in film. Our core material is plastic-free Natureflex film that is plant-based and home compostable. However, we recognize that some of our retail customers, as well as the UK government, do not agree with us that this makes the most sense for the environment, so when requested we do pack some products in polyethylene or polypropylene film. Ultimately, we think we have made the correct choice, because using plastic supports the oil industry, which is the root cause of all our problems, and we are constantly having to remove plastic feed sacks and soft drinks bottles from our wood – it’s a lesson in why reducing plastic is not enough and we need to eliminate it, because it just doesn’t break down in the environment.

In terms of transit, we pack in corrugated cardboard boxes. The recycled element in these varies from 63 – 100% depending on the specific requirements for the box. We do not use plastic for protective packaging and use a variety of paper-based materials and reused cardboard to prevent breakages. Because we use paper rather than plastic, it does mean we get a few extra breakages in transit than we would like, but we prefer to keep plastic out of our packaging so far as possible.

Whereas we produce relatively little waste in our operations, we do generate packaging as a food processor, and this enters the waste and recycling streams. We disclose the packaging we generate under the Extended Packaging Responsibility Regulations because we generate a relatively high weight of potential packaging waste as we pack in glass, even though we’re classed a small business under the regulations. In summary for 2024, we generated 52 tonnes of packaging, of which 39 tonnes, or 75% of the weight, was glass for our spice jars. 5 tonnes was paper, which comprises labels, boxes and packing paper, 3 tonnes was steel for the lids of the spice jars. We could change our profile by switching our packaging to plastic to remove the need for disclosure, but we don’t want to, because (in our opinion) glass is better for spices and the environment versus the more cost-effective alternative. Nudge economics does not always push you to make the best decisions.

Our targets for 2025 are to relaunch the paper-based packaging with a new supplier and to continue to keep on top of the waste chains and reduce waste.

BIODIVERSITY

We recognize that there is a biodiversity emergency. Biodiversity is the variety of all living things on Earth and how they fit together in the web of life, bringing oxygen, water, food, and countless other benefits to humanity. But we’re careless with this precious and beautiful resource, taking it far too much for granted.

Scientific studies indicate that UK is one of the world’s most nature-depleted countries, with on average about half its biodiversity left, far below the global average of 75%. It means the UK is the most depleted of the G7 countries and in the bottom 10% globally for biodiversity. Since 1970, there has been on average an almost 70% decline in the populations of mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, and amphibians.

As our products are grown, we recognise that they could have a negative impact on biodiversity and that we have a responsibility to minimise our impacts on biodiversity. Ultimately, this means that agriculture has to be regenerative and positive for the soil, water and biodiversity, or there will be nothing left to farm in future generations.

Some of this comes through our carbon reduction and water-saving programs, but core to our approach to saving biodiversity is being organic and committed to organic farming and with a focus on vegan products only.

Organic is about working with nature, conserving, and improving the soil, being firmly against GMO and removing all agrochemicals from the growing of our products and keeping processing chemicals out of all our products. We are committed to real food, with no nasties and nothing hidden. Over 80% of our products are organic with the remainder pesticide-free plants or additive-free chemicals, like salt, for example.

We are, also, working within our woodland creation project to return farmland to a more natural environment and to survey the land to give a baseline for biodiversity, so we can plan how best to manage the woodland to make way for nature. While nothing unique or rare has been found, there is a lot of interest for us in our wood: grass snakes, common lizards, toads, frogs, willow warblers and lots of nesting woodland birds, such as woodpeckers, old sessile and pendunculate oaks, old grey willows, which are covered in mosses and lichens, plus several indicators of ancient woodland. Much of the habitat is rhôs pasture which is special to the valleys in South Wales – this is a Molinia-Juncus type habitat, but which has relatively low levels of biodiversity.

In 2024, we installed trail cameras (Browning Spec Ops Elite HP5) at 2 points to observe animal activity (foxes, robins and chaffinches, amongst others), had a fungal survey carried out and inspected dormice boxes. In the dormice boxes, we found shrews, woodmice and nesting birds but no dormice activity. In 2025, we are looking at completion of quadrats for floral surveys and hedgerow surveys.

For us, we see that ultimately the point of reducing impacts on climate, the land and water is to give space for nature and enable nature to recover and that only this will truly address the biodiversity crisis.

WOODLAND CREATION PLAN

We are a very small business, with a small impact on the environment, but we recognize that we have a responsibility in how we run our business both to minimize our impacts on the earth and to provide our customers with the best product in terms of sustainability that they can find. Also, we realize that simply managing the business in an environmentally better, corporate way is not enough for us. So, we have grappled with what more we can do positively to impact the environment.

Our chosen route is to create a new woodland here in the UK. This is a very personal choice and there are many different answers to the problem, but we all must decide – whether, or not, it will be proven correct in the future – because to do nothing is not a credible option.

For us, a new wood answers how we can go beyond reducing our environmental impacts and reduce our dependence on offsets. It addresses carbon costs, air pollution, water pollution, flooding, biodiversity loss and land use changes.

The wood is being created on over 50 acres of former farmland in Carmarthenshire. About half of this has been planted with new trees, almost 30,000 new trees, which will sequester about 12,500 tonnes of carbon dioxide over the 100-year lifetime of the project. In addition, it reverses historic land use changes by reverting pasture for dairy and sheep to woodland, and it keeps coal in the ground as these trees are above coal reserves – the ground pretty much literally leaks coal from the soil.

In 2024, we planted 220 trees (aspen, downy and silver birch, hazel, sessile oak, rowan, service, spindle, grey willow). All trees are British grown, native trees from certified chains of custody. That’s another 200 or so tonnes of theoretical carbon that will be soaked up over their lifecycles and an improvement in the species mix. Since, we bought the wood, we’ve planted around 1,500 additional new trees to replace those trees that have not taken and to improve the species mix.

Importantly, as with our commitment to climate, we are using a science-based approach. This is a slow, painstaking and expensive process. We are building a picture of the scientific data literally from the ground up, beginning with soil surveys, water surveys and weather data to give a baseline of the physical and chemical inputs to the landscape. This is ongoing but is proving a very helpful process. At the same time, we have had surveys carried out of the habitat, as well as surveys of the trees, bryophytes, fungi and fauna, and are continuing with more detailed benchmarking of the flora and hedgerows in 2025. These inputs are providing a baseline that will enable us to ensure that the planting will be best for biodiversity and provide other environmental services, e.g., water quality and carbon sequestration services. It is important that these processes and our decisions are underpinned by scientific data. And the detailed scientific baseline will be invaluable in 100+ years for our grandchildren to see how things have changed through time and how the positive impacts have been achieved.

In terms of water services, the soil is wet and there are five streams that cut across the wood. The trees and plants create a rougher land surface, and the roots interfere with water movement across the surface, so reducing flood risk in the neighbouring valley and town. Also, the plants’ leaves clean the air, and their roots filter the water, reducing local air and water pollution.

To generate scientific data on water, we have 2 dipwells in the north and south of the woodland. These Solinst dataloggers record the water level and temperature every hour. This is enabling us to understand how water moves within the soil. It’s a bit early to unpack what the data is showing us, but we are seeing that the ground is sodden for more of the year than it is dry, so the question that we’re trying to understand is whether the wood can become a bog, with the potential to lay down new peat and so sequester carbon this way. In 2025, we will begin monitoring water levels in one of the becks to see how quickly water from rainfall becomes water flowing in the streams and into the valley below.

In terms of nature and how it will address biodiversity loss is more complex, but we are patiently working on it by collecting data and thinking about it. In general, the target is to preserve the existing temperate rainforest sections and to extend it into the newer planted areas.

The woodland, itself, comprises older trees in shelterbelts, lone trees, hedges, and areas where the hedges have expanded into the fields. The older trees are a mix of native trees, ranging in age 30 – 200 years old, and include alder, birch, blackthorn, cherry, crabapple, hawthorn, hazel, holly, oak, poplar, rowan, sycamore, and willow. The newer trees are a mix of native trees, about 8 years old now, that includes alder, willow (crack, goat and grey willow), downy and silver birch, elder, field maple, hazel, rowan, and pendunculate and sessile oak, spindle, and wild service. We have, also, set aside 3 acres (6%) to be a meadow and are looking at whether we should create a ride beneath some electricity cables, because this cannot become woodland for practical reasons.

The basic concept behind the planting is several stages: initial – planting out the fields with a core matrix of larger native trees; medium term – interspersing the core with clusters of, and individual, larger native trees to provide greater variety in terms of species and DNA and which are being planted at time intervals to widen the age profile of the newly planted areas; medium term – planting smaller trees and shrubs to deepen the range of native plants for the edge areas and to facilitate the development of an understorey; medium term – planting native woodland ground level flowers in clusters to enable a change in the floral diversity at the low levels – currently the flowers are meadow species. We envisage these planting stages to continue until 2031, which is 15 years from the first planting of the core matrix, after which the wood will be left to develop unchecked. Wherever there are plants naturally encroaching, these are being given the space to develop – as nature is best at this sort of thing – and we are finding that downy birch, sessile oak and grey willow are self-seeding very happily, and that blackthorn is extending well from hedgerows.

In late 2024 and early 2025, there were some very strong storms in South Wales, and we lost 9 mature trees, including 3 large sessile oaks that were over 100 years old. This was disappointing but nature will do what nature will do. Wherever possible, we are leaving these to decay in situ so that the decomposition bacteria, bugs, fungi, etc., can do their stuff. One of the trees needs cutting up because it is blocking a public footpath, but we’ll keep intervention to as minimal as possible whilst meeting obligations for safety and accessibility.

As regards other plants and animals, we are undertaking biodiversity surveys to develop a baseline. So far, we have done habitat and fauna surveys. There is a lot more work to be done, but ancient woodland indicators like bluebells have been found, polypody ferns, mosses and lichens are growing on the older trees, as well as grass snakes, lizards, toads, frogs, and willow warblers having been seen.

Our targets for 2025 are to plant 200 smaller trees and a few areas with wildflower seeds for shaded woodland areas, where these were impacted by heavy poaching caused by fly-grazing horses in 2024.

PEOPLE, COMMUNITIES AND GOVERNANCE

Our targets for People, Communities and Governance are:

• To target the personal development of our staff and support local education.
• To maintain a good balance between different types of working and people.
• To continue to support local charities through food donations and cash contributions.
• To plant trees, use local business and provide access across our wood through public footpaths.

Firstly, in terms of our staffing, we changed how we pay from the National Living Wage to that set by the Living Wage Foundation. This change has caused a significant increase in employment costs, but we believe it shows our commitment to better pay whilst continuing to maintain a sustainable business. In terms of staffing, 73% are women (8 people) and 27% are men (3 people), split as 54% full-time (6) and 46% part-time (5 people). We work a single shift, 5 days a week, with only limited flexibility on hours as we operate between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m.

Secondly, we trained all our staff with the necessary professional qualifications and workplace training best to carry out their roles. During 2024, Ellie continued her professional qualifications in procurement through CIPS, which will be a 5-year commitment by us - we are paying for her training and exams and giving her one paid day a week to do her learning, as well as providing a laptop. While this may not seem much for most businesses, she is 10% of our workforce and has been failed by the education system. We’re so proud of her and, in July 2024, she achieved CIPS Level 3 in Procurement & Supply Operations.

In 2024, Axel worked with Newcastle University students on their Food Marketing degree. This forms an important part of their final year where they must work in groups to provide consulting advice to a business in a real-world scenario. He had 10 students in 2 groups who worked on a project looking at how to use social media to enhance the bakery range. There were regular online meetings, a final presentation by the students and a consultancy document.

Thirdly, we made voluntary donations of £4,250 to charities that met our concerns, so local food and wildlife voluntary organisations. These included Ripon Community House Food Bank, Chefs in Schools, Initiative for Nature Conservation Cymru and Yorkshire Wildlife Trust.

Fourthly, we planted 220 trees in 2024, which will provide a beautiful temperate rainforest and increase biodiversity in the Amman Valley. This included black poplar, downy birch, goat willow, hazel, rowan and yew. We used local contractors to clear brambles from pathways and local environmentalists to conduct surveys (botanical, fauna, water), including commissioning surveys from Coal Spoil Fungi, a Welsh-based consultancy.

Finally, in terms of Governance, we remain a privately-owned business, with 50% woman-owned by Sophie Steenberg. There is no intention to change this ownership structure.

CUSTOMERS

Steenbergs packs organic, Fairtrade plant-based ingredients for smaller retailers and individual consumers which are mostly sold direct.

Our commitment to our customers is to continue with this high level of quality through great tasting products in practicable packaging through maintaining third-party audits of what we do.

So, amongst other systems, Steenbergs’ products continue to be audited by and certified by:

• Organic Food Federation for compliance with organic standards – annual audits.
• FLO-Cert for compliance with Fairtrade standards – audit due in 2025.
• KLBD for compliance with kosher standards – annual audits.
• The Vegan Society for extracts and flower waters – annual audits.
• Tarian Inspection for environmental practices under BS855:2016 – annual audits.
• Our BCorp audit is due in 2025.

Whilst we’re not audited to SMETA standards, we provide all requested data under the SEDEX system for corporate and social responsibility. We’ve been members of, and provided data, to that platform for over 5 years.

During 2024, Steenbergs continued with its rebranding process that has freshened up the shelf appeal of our products and incorporates the BCorp branding alongside relevant other certifications.

FINAL WORDS

The aims of Sophie and Axel Steenberg are to have a small but profitable business that is fair to people and good for the planet. We have pretty much hit our first set of 10-year targets (2016 – 2025) and will need to set ourselves some challenging ones for the next 10-year cycle. BCorp forms a crucial part of the validation of our commitments to be a decent business, sitting alongside our other certifications. They may not be gold-plated but they are at a decent (if not high) level for a small business like ours.

We can only do this with continued commitment from our customers to appreciate what we are trying to do rather than constantly to bear down on costs, and this remains a big challenge for small businesses like ours.

We hope that we can maintain this approach and that our customers and staff will continue to be involved and interested in our progress to becoming an even better business over the next few years. Finally, we would like to thank everyone at Steenbergs and our suppliers and customers for your support and understanding of what Sophie and Axel are trying to achieve at Steenbergs.