Delivering on our mission to be a greener business

Hestevard is passionate about innovation, the environment and sustainability, and as part of this, we are determined to move away from non-recyclable single-use plastics.  

Over the last 18 months, we have had an eye on our plastic nutraceutical tubs. We wanted to reduce our environmental footprint, reduce our rigid single-use plastics and introduce packaging that was easier to recycle. 

Our first step was to make more of our products available in boxes and sachets. This dramatically reduced our use of single-use plastic. However, it still left our larger tubs of equine supplements needing a more sustainable solution.  

The biggest challenge was finding a refill-style pouch that not only met our sustainability goals, but also the high-quality standard that we uphold for our packaging.  

Yards are not the most forgiving environment for packaging – often damp, cold, or incredibly hot. We needed to find a packaging type that was both sustainable and strong to withstand the ever-changing environment without compromising its precious contents.  

We found a huge number of pouch suppliers that offered ‘greener’ plastic alternatives, but often we discovered they were only level-7 recyclable. Level 7 plastics are often used to make baby bottles, sippy cups, water cooler bottles, and car parts and some level 7’s are ‘technically’ compostable.  

These plastics can often confuse people because, despite being labeled with the iconic green recycle triangle, they must be thrown in the bin and sent to a landfill site. It will then sit there and take hundreds of years to decompose. 

We wanted to go further than this and move away from anything going to landfill.  

After lots of searching, environmental testing design, and production tests, we have found an excellent answer to this sustainable packaging conundrum.  

We are very excited to introduce our brand-new 100% recyclable pouches for BozMerix and Hesteflex, with many more product pouches to follow soon! 

Our new pouches mean we can maintain the premium quality packaging standard of our brand in a way that is far healthier for the planet. 

Our new pouches are made from low-density polyethene (LDPE), a recyclable Resin grade-4 coded plastic. The different grades of plastic are recycled in separate ways but recycling our LDPE results in the most greenhouse gas savings compared to grades 1, 2 and 3.  

While our LDPE pouches can be fully recycled, different Local Authorities may handle them differently. To check if our pouches can be placed in your domestic recycling wheelie-bin or box, it’s worth checking directly with your local council. 

If your council advises against putting them in your standard curb-side collections, then our pouches are in the same recycle category as frozen food bags, squeezable bottles, and recyclable supermarket carrier bags. There will be a group-4 plastic recycling points at your local supermarket, the plastic will be collected, and bulk recycled into recycled products such as water bottles or carrier bags. 

In an ideal world, all packaging would be produced from materials and manufacturing processes that would not contaminate the environment, enabling us to be carbon neutral. 

With that goal in mind, Hestevard promise to continue implementing more eco-friendly practices while delivering precision nutritional support for your horse.