The UK’s fourth largest supermarket chain Morrisons has launched own brand carbon neutral eggs.
While carbon neutral eggs have been available in the UK for some time, the Morrisons offering, branded Planet Friendly Eggs, is thought to be the first time in the country that carbon neutral eggs have been launched as an own brand. What’s more, the eggs come from hens fed on on-farm produced insects.
Committed to zero
As part of the supermarket chain’s commitment to be directly supplied by zero emissions UK farms by 2030, it has been looking at net zero carbon farm models and Planet Friendly Eggs are the first product to come out of these models.
The insects that the feed the hens are produced in a what is called a mini farm, supplied by insect farm company Better Origin. Each container can help to feed 32,000 free range hens, Morrisons says, and receives three metric tons of waste from the company’s fruit and vegetable site each week.
More than just chicken feed
The egg farm, however, is not simply endowed with an insect farm. It also has a large wind turbine, solar panels and a carbon sequestration program to offset any remaining emissions on the farm, which has 20% of its area planted with trees.
According to Sophie Throup, Head of Agriculture with Morrisons, the supermarket’s customers consider the environmental impact of the food they eat and want affordable zero emission produce. She continued that the company was thrilled that, after 18 months of hard work, the eggs were finally hitting shelves.
And in another first, the eggs will carry the British Lion Egg quality mark but printed in green rather the usual red.
A pack of six Planet Friendly Eggs retails for GBP1.50 (US$1.81). The cheapest pack of six eggs advertised on Morrisons’ website at the time of writing was six free range eggs, retailing for GBP1.05.
