Why We Use Plastic-Free Packaging
At The Wildlife Food Company, our mission is not only to support wildlife in our gardens and the wider countryside, but also to protect the natural world that those animals depend on. That's why we've chosen to use plastic-free packaging wherever possible.
It might seem like a small detail — the bag your bird food arrives in — but for us, it goes right to the heart of what we stand for.
The Problem With Plastic
Plastic has become one of the biggest environmental challenges of our time. Every year, millions of tonnes of plastic waste end up in our rivers, countryside and oceans. Unlike natural materials, plastic doesn't break down safely — it slowly fragments into microplastics, which can remain in the environment for hundreds of years.
And it's not just the obvious litter you can see. Microplastics have now been found in rivers, soil, rainwater, and even in the bodies of wildlife. Scientists are only beginning to understand the full scale of the damage — but what we already know is serious.
Wildlife is particularly vulnerable. Birds, mammals and marine animals can mistake plastic for food or become entangled in plastic waste. Seabirds feed plastic fragments to their chicks. Hedgehogs get caught in plastic netting. Fish ingest microplastic particles throughout their entire lives. Even when plastic breaks down into tiny particles, it continues to move through ecosystems in ways that affect the whole food chain.
Photo credit - Tim Mossholder.
Why Packaging Matters — Especially for Wildlife Food
There's something particularly important about this issue for businesses like ours. We sell food to people who love wildlife and care about the natural world. It would be deeply contradictory to deliver that food in packaging that ends up harming the very animals our customers are trying to help.
If a bag of bird food is dropped in a garden, blown into a hedgerow, or improperly disposed of, we want to know that it won't still be sitting in that hedgerow in fifty years' time. We want it to break down safely, return to the earth, and leave nothing harmful behind.
That's why every product we sell comes in recyclable paper sacks, cardboard packaging and plastic-free materialswherever possible. These materials are far kinder to the environment, easier to recycle, and cause far less long-term damage than single-use plastics.
Our ZEROBAGS Delivery Service
We've taken this a step further for our local Cumbrian customers with something we're genuinely proud of: package-free deliveries.
If you're within our local delivery zone, you can place your order using the code ZEROBAGS and, as long as you're home on delivery day, we'll bring your wildlife feed directly to your door and pour it straight into your own containers. No packaging at all — from us, or from you.
It's a small thing, but it's exactly the kind of practical, local solution that makes a real difference. We deliver every Friday to customers within 15 miles of our base in Cumbria (CA11), and free local delivery is available on orders over £25.
What You Can Do Too
We know that plastic-free packaging from one small business is just one piece of a much bigger puzzle. Real change happens when consumers, businesses and policymakers all move in the same direction. Here are a few ways you can help:
Ask supermarkets to do better. Supermarkets are highly responsive to customer feedback. A polite letter or email to your local store asking what they're doing to reduce plastic packaging carries more weight than you might think. When enough people ask, things change.
Look for refill shops near you. Across the UK, a growing number of zero-waste and refill shops let you bring your own containers and buy exactly what you need without any packaging. A brilliant local example near us is Another Weigh, who have shops in Penrith and Kendal — anotherweigh.uk. Well worth a visit if you're in Cumbria.
Recycle what you can't avoid. Not every product will be plastic-free just yet. When you do have plastic packaging, make sure it goes in the right bin — and check your local council's recycling guidelines, as accepted materials vary by area.
Buy from businesses that share your values. Every purchase is a small vote for the kind of world you want to live in. By choosing suppliers who prioritise sustainable, plastic-free packaging, you're helping to shift demand across the whole industry.
Part of a Bigger Picture
For us, plastic-free packaging isn't a marketing decision — it's an expression of something we genuinely believe. We live in the Lake District National Park. We see red squirrels in our garden. We watch birds on our feeders every morning. This landscape and its wildlife mean everything to us, and we want to run our business in a way that protects it.
That means thinking carefully about every part of what we do — the food we source, the suppliers we work with, the packaging we use, and the way we talk about conservation with our customers. It all connects.
By choosing plastic-free packaging, we hope to play our part in protecting the countryside, supporting wildlife, and leaving a healthier planet for the next generation of nature lovers.
Shop Our Plastic-Free Wildlife Food
Every order from The Wildlife Food Company arrives in plastic-free packaging, delivered to your door across the UK:
Free UK delivery on orders over £30. Local Cumbrian delivery every Friday on orders over £25 — use code ZEROBAGS for package-free delivery straight into your own containers.
The Wildlife Food Company is a family-run business based in the Lake District National Park, Cumbria. We're passionate about UK wildlife, conservation and leaving the natural world in better shape than we found it.