Our Sustainability Story
How we make a difference
Sustainability is at the core of Sundown’s values
Over the past 20 years, we have worked steadily and consistently to reduce our carbon footprint and impact on the environment. Our actions to improve our sustainability help you reduce your carbon ‘hoof print’ or ‘paw print’ by making more environmentally-friendly choices when you buy our horse bedding, chicken bedding, or our cat litter.
Read on to learn more about our approach to sustainability.
What makes Sundown bedding and cat litter so sustainable?
We take a whole-business approach to reducing our impact on the environment. From the power we use in our factory, where we source our straw from, how it’s transported to our customers, and even how we package our products. Not to mention that straw, the main component of all our products, is an incredibly sustainable by-product of crop production – so we’re recycling before we even start!
Straw – Making Use Of Natural Waste
Straw is the dry stalk of wheat, barley and oilseed rape plants, grown for their grain. When the grain is harvested, this dried stalk is left behind and we come along and collect it up to make entirely natural, high quality bedding and litter products for horses, chickens and cats.
Unlike wood-based bedding, which requires land, water and energy to grow trees, straw is what’s left over from a food crop – all the growing energy and activity is done for the grain. This makes straw an efficient alternative to wood, that conserves valuable natural resources.
Full Circle Recycling
And when your horse or chicken bedding or cat litter needs to be disposed of, straw breaks-down incredibly quickly, ready to release valuable nutrients as compost for flower beds or fields. You can even compost your cat litter (with poo removed) at home.
And you’ll likely find it much easier to find a farmer dispose of straw-based muck-heaps than wood-based ones.
Sourced and Produced Locally
All our straw is sourced from farmers in the UK. We reduce our transport emissions by keeping it local – all our straw comes from within 70 miles of our factory. Compare to wood shavings which may have been transported from overseas, often Europe, for hundreds of miles.
In fact we even bale a significant amount of straw ourselves from farmers very local to our factory – reducing our ‘bedding miles’ even further!
Naturally Sun Dried
All our straw is ‘sun dried’ naturally in the fields before we bale it, so there’s no additional energy required to dry the straw before we can process it. That’s not the case for some wood-based bedding, where cut logs often have to be dried in coalfired kilns before they can be turned into shavings.
By purchasing our straw from local, British farmers, we’re supporting the farming community, contributing to local economies and helping to foster a more resilient, sustainable agriculture system.
Greening Our Bedding Production
Sundown’s factory operates entirely on green, renewable electricity generated from wind and biomass. We’ve been using green energy for over 15 years, and that’s something we’re very proud of.
But that’s not enough – over the years we have also made our production more efficient and reduced our energy consumption by 30% by replacing inefficient equipment and machinery in our factory with newer, more energy-efficient parts – overall reducing the electricity needed per bale of bedding we make. Small things like switching to LED lights, and reducing single-use plastics on site also add up.
The method we use to make our horse bedding, chicken bedding and cat litter is also entirely chemical-free, water-free, heat-free, and carbon-free, which reduces resource consumption and pollution.
Supporting Biodiversity
Although we are based in the countryside, we value the biodiversity of our site. We’ve planted trees around the factory to help nature thrive alongside us.
Reducing Plastic Usage
It’s impossible to entirely remove plastic from our production system, but we are working hard to reduce it.
Over the past three years we have reduced the plastic used in each bale by over 25%.
Our bale and bag packaging is 100% recyclable (with soft plastics) and the plastic film contains 30% recycled plastic content, reducing our use of virgin plastics.
Responsible Waste Management
Any waste our factory produces is recycled or disposed of responsibly.
Straw tailings – the bits that are left behind / can’t be processed – are sent to a local anaerobic digestion (AD) plant to produce more green electricity. Any plastic or paper waste is recycled or disposed of sensitively through a variety of providers.
Discover Our Products
Chicken Bedding
Egg-e-bed chicken bedding is made from finely chopped 100% British wheat straw, double de-dusted and packed into a convenient bale, and with added eucalyptus fragrance for a soft, clean and fresh-smelling coop that you and your chickens will love!
>> Discover Egg-e-bed Chicken Bedding
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