MONTEREY, Calif. — Seeing was believing at Organic Produce Summit’s trade show at the Monterey Conference Center on July 14, where Boskovich Farms featured its Fresh Food Group’s recently launched Fair Earth Farms retail line. The new line of six organic salad kits and salad blends are packaged in plant-based, fully compostable bags, printed using water-based inks that will break down into organic soil.
Just how compostable is the packaging from the Boskovich subsidiary Fresh Prep?
Boskovich’s Greg Welch, senior director retail sales, Fresh Prep, showed off a cup filled with a nearly fully composted Fair Earth Farms salad bag, which he said had spent about 12 hours in a Lomi kitchen composter, along with assorted vegetable scraps and eggshells. The result was a rich-looking soil flecked with green salad bag bits that would have composted given a bit more time.
“We’re trying to do our part,” Deep Silver, senior marketing director at Fresh Prep, LLC and Boskovich Family Farms, told The Packer.
The USDA-Certified Organic Fair Earth Farms line offers two salad kit flavors and four salad greens blends. The two salad kits are Superfood Crunch and Honey Coconut Cashew. Each brightly colored package lists the kit ingredients and the fully compostable promise.
In addition to being USDA-Certified Organic, Fair Earth Farms is a member of the Sustainable Packaging Coalition and is certified through the Biodegradable Products Institute, or BPI. The Fair Earth Farms packaging bears the BPI symbol, as well as the How2Compost label, a standardized label that communicates composting instructions to the public.
“BPI is the golden standard,” said Silver, who explained that it takes two years to achieve certification through the certifier with U.S. offices in New York, N.Y. “BPI is the most globally recognized symbol” for biodegradable materials, Silver added.
While Fair Earth Farms launched with two salad kits and four triple-washed and ready-to-eat greens varieties, including Baby Spinach, Baby Arugula, Spring Mix and Power Greens, plans are already underway to expand the salad kit line.
The company will debut more flavors at the International Fresh Produce Association’s Global Produce Expo & Floral Show in Orlando, Fla., this October.
“This is not a one and done by any stretch of the imagination,” Silver said.
