Why sustainability and care for the environment is so important to us at Kinsale Mead
• Raw materials - Honey, Water, Fruit, Packaging
• Energy and Waste reduction
• Supporting sustainability education through education about the importance of bees
Origin Green
As an Origin Green certified company, part of our remit is to educate our meadery visitors about the problems that bees face. Beekeepers face significant losses and fragmentation of pollinator-friendly habitats with diverse food sources as well as high use of pesticides, the impact of the verroa mite and colony collapse. Overuse of herbicides also affect lack of biodiversity and our visitor education remit is to focus on what we can all do to help.
Origin Green certification is a Bord Bia initiative, independently assessed.
Recycling
We recycle all our wooden pallets and metal honey barrels to people in the local community (via Donedeal and Facebook local marketplace). We keep some pallets for use within the meadery for storage and shipping.
We recycle paper, cardboard, plastic and glass at our local recycling centre. Our fruit waste we recycle in our garden. We are working on making our packaging as sustainable as practical, sourcing cardboard and bubble wrap from sustainable sources as available.
Bee Friendly Planting
Our meadery is part of a larger light industrial building. We have a small sloping rocky area beside our unit planted into pollinator friendly zone. The plants were chosen with the student of the Permaculture and sustainable horticulture course at Kinsale College of Further Education. The plants include foxgloves, thyme, lavender, fennel, nasturtium, rosemary, clover and borage.
We continue our own education with a course on Sustainable Permaculture at UCC.