Going Greener

We try our hardest to provide you with good quality products and excellent customer service through the National Trail shop. We also consider the environment with our packaging.

We mainly use carboard packaging which can be recycled. We do use some non-recyclable material such as polystyrene chips and some tricky items such as bubble wrap and jiffy bags.

However, we don’t buy bubble wrap or polystyrene chips, if you get products packed with these items from us them that is because we are re-using packaging that has been sent to us. You may also find your goods arrive in a re-used cardboard box or packed with paper or shredded cardboard.

But we have realised there is so much more we can do. We have set out a list of aims, these are changes we are going to make. Not all of them will happen immediately as we have some stock of, for example, bubble-lined jiffy bags. We will use that stock up (throwing it away makes no environmental sense) – but as we buy new stock we will buy greener.

The first changes we are going to make are:

1. We will stop buying standard bubble lined jiffy bags. Now, that doesn’t mean you won’t get items from us in those bags as we have them in store, but we will not buy any more. We will now buy fibre-filled bags.
2. We will use paper parcel tape. This is much more environmentally friendly and can be recycled with the box.
3. We used to send mugs in carboard-boxes inside a jiffy bag, we swapped the jiffy bag for a recyclable mailing bag, then dropped the bag all together. Mugs will now be delivered in a carboard box, packed with re-used packaging.
4. We send woven badges out in small polythene sleeves, these look nice but are an unnecessary use of plastic. We will phase out the use of these bags. If you really want a badge in a plastic sleeve please add a note to your order.
5. We use polyethene mailing bags, we will seek to find a more environmental alternative, but for now we will move to buying recycled mailing bags that can be recycled. At present the most environmental ones we can buy are 95% recycled but will continue to look for better alternatives.

We will continue to review our environmental impact and will look for further changes in the future. We will, for example, speak to regular suppliers about their packaging to reduce the amount of polystyrene we are sent.

We will keep you updated as we make these changes.