Thoughtful Actions

Although we are a small business, we have a big heart. Here at Kirsty’s we want our impact on the planet to be a positive one which means we are fully committed to taking care of our beautiful planet and the people within it.

We choose to focus on lots of small, but meaningful actions which we carry out on a daily basis in order to make a big difference in the long run.

Caring About Our Food Waste

All our meals are steam cooked which makes them healthier and because it removes any microrganisms it gives our meals a longer shelf life, without any additives. A longer shelf life helps minimise food waste not just at home, where 70% of the UK’s food waste is said to occur but also in store. To find out more about our steam cooking process and it’s benefits, watch this video:

We love food and we really don’t want it to go to waste

So here’s a few steps we have put in place to limit our waste:

  • We have set ourselves a target of less than 0.5% of food waste in our factory, which we will review ourselves against every 6 months.
  • All finished meals & ingredients that are destined to become food waste are donated to Fareshare Yorkshire, in the past 12 months we have donated 9,913 meals which have helped over 150 vital frontline charities.
  • In the factory all our organic waste now goes to anaerobic digestion, a process that produces renewable natural gas and fertiliser

Caring About Our Energy Materials Use

We understand the huge importance of energy efficiency so to ensure we are using energy more carefully, we are:

  • Our factory now has 100% LED lighting, which on average saves 30% energy, we’ve also started installing motion sensors so if they’re not in use the lights automatically turn off.
  • Segregating our waste to maximise recycling rates.
  • We’re working hard to increase the recycled content of all our packaging materials and have switched our supplier to make sure this is an audited process so we can reliably track our progress.
  • Although we’re not a vegan brand, we have continued expanding our meat free options and they now account for nearly 20% of our sales; it’s estimated that meals without meat & dairy can reduce the carbon footprint from food by nearly three-quarters.
  • Transport to supermarkets is a large part of our carbon footprint, so we have analysed our transport routes and have relocated our distribution hub to cut out nearly 10k miles a year.

We are also committed to:

  • Reducing our CO2 output through being more energy efficient and analysing all areas of the business to make reductions. As a result the carbon footprint of our owned operations has been reduced by 22% in the last 12 months.

Caring About People

We care deeply about helping people and improving their wellbeing, whether that’s within our company or the wider communities, we aim to support in any way we can:

  • We’re paying above the living wage to all employees and offer free healthy meals for everyone working at our factory.

A Big List Of Things We’re Working On:

During the 2 years since our factory started making our meals we’ve all been working hard to understand our environmental impact and how we can reduce it.
We aren’t perfect, but we are working to lessen our own faults and we are committed to doing more.

  1. We’re working on understanding our carbon footprint and carbon ‘hotspots’, not just in our factory, but all the way back in our supply chain. As we’re a ready meals manufacturer we use lots of different ingredients coming from lots of different places so this is quite a complex and time consuming process. This information will allow us to set meaningful targets for ourselves.
  2. We’re committed to increasing the percentage of our energy coming from renewable sources by at least 60% and looking at ways to be more energy efficient, including simple measures like lagging pipes, changing fuel types and switching everything off over the weekend.
  3. We’re reviewing where we can reduce waste and consumption throughout our supply chain, for example: reducing excess packaging, reducing waste of raw materials, reducing food miles & reducing travel.