Westmoreland Sales - Topline Farms

Single-use Plastic Free English Cucumbers

Reduction of single-use plastics

Common Sustainability Practices

Single-use plastic reduction

Summary

The objective is to remove all single-use plastics from our English cucumbers. Retailers and customers alike are always looking for ways to reduce their plastic use and this was a way we could help. 

Situation

We use a lot of plastic to wrap our English cucumbers.  From one farm alone - we use 8 tons of single-use plastics a year.  We're trying to reduce this to 0.

Strategy

We met a California company, Apeel, at a trade show and decided to form a partnership to try and reduce our single-use plastic use.  Using Edipeel, we developed a solution to single-use plastic use on our cucumbers through years of trials.

Results and Lessons Learned

• Currently shipping plastic-free English cucumbers to two major retailers in Canada
• In talks to expand this program to other retailers
• Taken three years to see this come to fruition
• Took some time to get the machine up and running