Earth Care

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We support local growers and work to source the best-quality produce for our bodies and the Earth that aspire to maximise the positive impact and minimise the negative of their production and procurement. 

Towards zero waste

At the Co-op one of our central focuses is care for our environment. We aim to become a zero-waste organisation and we have a number of habits and initiatives that take us towards this target. 

Shopping in bulk

We believe that shopping in bulk is one of the easiest ways for an individual to drastically reduce their usage of single-use packaging. Shopping in bulk also reduces food wastage because you only buy exactly as much as you need. We offer a wide variety of unpackaged groceries and household supplies to make shopping in bulk as easy as 1-2-3:

1. Bring your containers from home or use the free reusable containers that we have at the Co-op.
2. Weigh your containers and note how much each container weighs.
3. Fill up your containers and you’re ready to check out at the counter.

Waste re-use & disposal at the Co-op

Donating jars & containers to the Co-op

The Co-op accepts donations of clean, re-usable glass and plastic containers, as well as clean plastic and paper bags. You can drop off your jars and containers to the labelled bins just inside the shop door.

Container Deposit Scheme – donate to us while cleaning up the environment

We are a registered organisation with the ACT Container Deposit Scheme. If you have containers at home that you would like to donate to us, you can drop them off at your nearest return point and donate the container refunds to the Food Co-op. Alternatively, you can drop them to our Container Deposit Scheme bin inside the shop door at the Co-op.

To donate the refunds to us at the Return point, use our Reference Number: E011288

Cardboard

One thing we can’t avoid in the food business is cardboard. Almost all of our deliveries come in cardboard boxes and while we recycle all of these boxes, we’d prefer them to be re-used. If you would like cardboard boxes, we have a variety of sizes you can choose from – just email info@cbrfoodcoop.org.au.

Soft plastics

We recycle our soft plastics through REDcycle. While we have limited capacity and can’t accept household soft plastics, we encourage you to drop off your clean, dry, soft plastic waste at your nearest REDcycle drop-off point.

Pallets

The Co-op receives many of our orders on pallets, so we regularly have pallets to give away. For some great ideas on how to use pallets, check out this great Pinterest board! If you’d like to pick up some free pallets, email info@cbrfoodcoop.org.au

Compost

The Co-op has food waste bins for our food scraps. Our friends at Another Way of Living take our food scraps to feed to their chooks each week. Unfortunately, we can’t accept household food scraps as we have limited capacity. You can contact Brook Clinton from the Hackett Compost Collective if you are looking for a curbside compost collection service.

Focus on local

Here at the Co-op, we take our food very seriously. We endeavour to offer the best produce that we can in terms of environmental impact; growing methods (organic, bio-dynamic, regenerative etc), transport (local, national, international), packaging and more.

Why do we do this? Because it just makes sense. We are in changing times and we must change with them – we must move away from the global food market and return to a local, regeneratively-grown food market. Joyfully, this comes with a whole lot of other benefits; reinvigorating eco-systems as well as our human systems.

We are always interested in supporting more local suppliers of quality produce so if you know of another local farm doing great things, please let us know at fresh@cbrfoodcoop.org.au

Some of our beloved local suppliers include:

We have other suppliers that are further afield, or who supply to us through wholesalers. If you would like more information about a particular product, email our Ordering Manager Katalin at products@cbrfoodcoop.org.au