Hello Planet Lover

Hippy, daisy-chain making, Yoko Ono devotees… pretentious organic tofu chewing beard wearers holding hands and singing Kumbaya around the campfire … This might be how some people view the classic Planet Lover but it’s super BORING – with a capital B. Indeed, this archaic, cliché way of thinking is, of course, a thing of the past and total nonsense. That’s because sustainability and environmental protection effects all of us! Which is why our Planet Lover section is just the right thing for you.

Make a conscious choice for the future and be part of the much-needed change to a plant-based diet. This is because around 24% of Europe’s CO2 emissions are due to the consumption of animal-based foodstuffs. Even a flexitarian diet with vegan products can significantly help minimise the urgently needed overall reduction in consumption of animal products. The more flexitarians, vegetarians and especially vegans there are, the better it is for the environment.

To illustrate: With a completely plant-based diet, you save 4,200 litres of water per day, 3.8 square meters of forest, as well as 1 animal, and reduce a whole 4.5kg of CO2 (Source: www.cowspiracy.com/facts). Wow! Now, if that’s not an argument!

The eco balance of our products

Using a sustainability score that can be seen on the packaging of our products, we reveal the environmental footprint of each item. You can find out how, where, what and why we do that in this blog post.

Our Environment Bodyguard product tip: The Veganz Roasted Bars

Who needs milk chocolate when you can have the chocotastic Roasted Chocs from Veganz? In Roasted Hazelnut and White Roasted Almond varieties, these two vegan sweethearts impress not only with their incredibly delicate melt-in-your-mouth glaze, but also their ecological packaging and Eaternity Sustainability Score!

Do you care about the environmental footprint of food, too? Then you should take a closer look at our other sustainable favourites.

Eating vegan while travelling – tips and tricks for planes, outdoor excursions, trains, and car trips

Do you think such a thing as environmentally responsible travel is impossible? Rubbish! Take a look at these tips and tricks. We’ll show you how to make your trips more sustainable with plant-based foods.

Planet Lover FAQs

Why are we still using plastic for our product packaging?

The packaging of our products is extremely important to us, as well as to our environment. The Veganz Team is particularly concerned about plastic packaging, which is why we try whenever possible to reduce or replace plastic through the use of other materials. That’s not always achievable, but at the same time doesn’t mean this packaging is not sustainable. Because for many products, plastic is indeed essential packaging and, surprisingly, environmentally friendlier than glass.
Yes, you read that right! It’s a widespread eco-myth that disposable glass per se is better than plastic in terms of sustainability. How environmentally friendly a product package is depends on the factors “energy consumption during production,” “distribution channels,” “energy input during recycling,” “size and weight of the package,” and “cleaning effort.” This means for our glass example:

• The production of glass is quite expensive and complex. The manufacturing from quartz sand – a finitely available raw material – requires so much energy and heat that one can actually only compensate for this expense by the infinite use of the glass container.
• Glass weighs more than plastic, so the carbon footprint of transporting glass is greater than plastic packaging.
• Reusable glasses can be recycled well and completely melted down again at very high temperatures, but this requires an immense amount of energy. Chemicals must also be used for cleaning, which pollutes the environment and the climate (keyword CO2).

When you consider all the factors that go into packaging – such as sustainability, meeting strict legal requirements for food packaging, and consumer-friendly pricing – plastic is often simply the best alternative.

That’s because plastic is simply unbeatable as a packaging material, especially when it comes to shelf life, adequate product protection, freshness and hygiene. Think about it: All Veganz products are transported from the manufacturer to us, then to the supermarket, passing through many hands. Half-baked compromises are out of the question – the safety of the product, and ultimately yours, is far too important to us. However, our goal is to make all product packaging as sustainable as possible and to switch to more advanced alternatives where possible. Of course, we will continue to follow current developments in the field of packaging technology and thus optimise our packaging concept bit by bit.

With the compostable inner foil of the Veganz Chocs and the Veganz Gourmet Piece eco pack – consisting of renewable raw materials – we have already succeeded in making enormous improvements. In addition, the environmental footprint of our packaging is taken into account when calculating the respective sustainability score of the product.

If you have ideas on how we can optimise our packaging concept and thus reduce plastic, please let us know via our contact form. We look forward to your suggestions.

What sustainable packaging do you already use?

Sustainability is in our products and all around them – that means in our packaging as well. Despite strict food standards for shelf life and storage, we are looking for solutions to reduce or, optimally, avoid plastic packaging completely. From the point of view of sustainability, Veganz expects packaging to be made preferably from recycled material. This means that they should ideally be certified according to the Blue Angel or FSC recycled guidelines, or comparable.

But we have even more up our sleeves: from compostable foils made from NatureFlexTM material or renewable raw materials such as cellulose and starch, recycled (waste) paper and PET to mineral oil-free printing inks – we will be able to find a sustainable wrapper for just about any Veganz product!

Some Veganz products contain palm oil. Why?

First of all, a very important piece of information: Already 92% of our products are free from palm oil or fat, and only 11 of our 120 Veganz-Products contain it at all – RSPO certified, of course. Why? Because we obviously want to be very careful with this ingredient.

Simply not using any palm oil at all is not so easy to realise for some products, because the plant oil is an essential raw material in the production of treats like our Veganz Chocolate Crème Spread. So far, we haven’t been able to find a vegan alternative to substitute the duo of sunflower oil and butter that meets our requirements, is as incredibly versatile and doesn’t reduce the quality of the recipe.

Palm oil is neutral in taste, heat stable and has a super long shelf life. It also has a firm consistency at room temperature, and therefore doesn’t need to be chemically hardened, while becoming soft at body temperature. Pretty handy, huh ?! This is what makes our chocolate crème so wonderfully smooth and melt-in-your-mouth. So much so that we’re sure you can no longer imagine life without our chocolate spread on your Sunday toast. Wanna bet?

In addition to these very positive characteristics, a further feature for the use of palm oil that plays a very large role: other raw materials like coconut, rape and sunflower oil have an even worse ecological footprint and at times need 17 times more arable land.

Nevertheless, it’s Veganz’s goal to give up palm oil completely at some point.

Until then, we will only use RSPO certified palm oil in our own products and work together exclusively with certified providers, making it possible to use only the best quality and most fair products. With the Sustainability Score, we’ve consciously set the parameter for the protection of the rain forest and you can immediately see when you purchase the product if it is acceptable.