Great taste and zero-waste – what’s not to love about ethey’s sustainable cooked meal delivery service?
Food has a secure place in a list of our most basic needs, right beside air, water, and shelter. It’s a fact – we can’t live without it. Food can be fundamental to meet our needs, but we want more than the bare essentials. We want it to be delicious, reasonably priced, easy to prepare, and conveniently accessible. Ethey, a Canadian-based, cooked-meal delivery company, founded by Nick Spina, has built a business based on satisfying everything on the list, with the addition of something special: zero food waste and environmental friendliness.
They snagged the name “ethey” because it is an ethical, sustainable, food service company. Ethey is all about satisfying customers and providing convenience in an environmentally-friendly way. Most of us are not familiar with a closed-loop production system, so let’s start at the beginning and explore five steps involved in ethey’s closed-loop system.
First stop in ethey’s closed-loop system: ethey sources food from local farms.
One of ethey’s priorities is supporting local farmers by including them in their closed-loop system. Buying food from local farms contributes to the livelihood of these farmers, who continue to invest in their businesses and grow more fresh food. This ensures the availability of the freshest ingredients for the chef-cooked meals that will later be delivered to thousands of ethey customers.
Second, nothing is wasted in the food preparation phase.
As all those fresh foods are cleaned, chopped, diced, and cooked, peelings and food scraps are saved for composting along with any food reserves that don’t meet ethey’s high freshness standards. The company is going the extra mile to avoid food waste because as much as 40% of all food ends up in landfills. Ethey is a superstar in minimizing the environmental impact of their food production services, contributing to a cleaner world. This stash is carefully saved for an ideal depository for food scraps.
Third, food scraps are transformed into something valuable.
Ethey is partnered with a local wormery where they send their food scraps. The worms do the work of converting those scraps into vermicompost, a nutrient-rich soil enhancer and fertilizer. The scraps from millions of restaurants end up in trash bags in landfills all over the world, and they do not productively break down. Ethey found a zero-waste way of doing food that is good for the environment; nothing goes to waste!
Fourth, the compost material is returned to the farms that sourced the food.
The vermicompost, which farmers refer to as “black gold for the garden,” is returned to the land where the food was sourced. Farmers use this fertilizer to enrich the soil that will produce their next fresh food crop. “We are proud of our closed-loop food delivery system,” says Spina. “The cycle begins and ends with local farms, and we are very proud of our wormery partnership and zero-waste standards.”
Fifth, a new growing season begins, and new seeds are planted.
The cycle begins again, with farmers planting and growing new crops, producing a fresh supply of produce. The idea to launch ethey was based on having good, fresh food available on a consistent basis. Because they regularly purchase farm produce, in a synchronistic way, ethey is contributing to the livelihood of employees of many local farms, something that is good for the communities they serve and for the economy.
Ethey’s cutting-edge, closed-loop system is certainly something to be proud of, and this accomplishment stands proudly beside its chef-prepared recipes that are wowing Canadian customers left and right. Meals offer freshness, variety, wholesomeness, and, best of all, flavor.
“The best and easiest call out to differentiate us from HelloFresh and GoodFood is that we are a COOKED MEAL delivery service and the others are a MEAL KIT or RAW FOOD RECIPE delivery service,” says Spina.
