Green Tail - Environmental Management Plan

Bubby Biscuits’ mission is to provide an organic, healthy snack for your pet.  We are also committed to sustaining the environment and promoting green methods of doing business, which we call our “Green Tail” approach.

Our “Green Tail” approach is to:

• Become a Responsible Environmental Steward
• Follow the Three R’s: Reduce, Reuse and Recycle
• Support and Foster Relationships with Local Businesses

 

Become a Responsible Environmental Steward

Bubby Biscuits does not take for granted the wonderful, complex and interdependent world we all call home.  We know for the past 200 years, the human footprint has made a bigger, darker imprint that is being felt today by all of us.  Trillions of pounds of chemicals have infected our food and water supplies, which has led to long term degenerative diseases in both humans and animals. Well, our paws are up and ready to pounce on this issue by conducting our business in a sustainable, environmentally friendly way.  We will strive to learn and adopt business processes that are good for our planet earth and help sustain our local community.  We admit that we are just puppies when it come to understanding how to be truly green, but we promise to continuously educate ourselves and share our findings with our customers and business partners.

 

Follow the Three R’s: Reduce, Reuse and Recycle

Reduce - The process and the policy of reducing the amount of waste produced by a person or a society. Source

Reuse - Is to use an item more than once. This includes conventional reuse where the item is used again for the same function and new-life reuse where it is used for a new function. Source

Recycle - Involves processing used materials into new products to prevent waste of potentially useful materials, reduce the consumption of fresh raw materials, reduce energy usage, reduce air pollution (from incineration) and water pollution (from landfilling) by reducing the need for "conventional" waste disposal, and lower greenhouse gas emissions as compared to virgin production. Source

These processes are the core of any green business, and we have made these a priority.  We started with a few simple wags of our green tails in our effort to incorporate these processes into our business.

Reduce

Earth Friendly Products - Our core products we make or resell can either be eaten or are biodegradable, which minimizes land fill waste.  Our core products are also organic or all natural. This reduces the environmental remediation and health care needs that arise when harmful chemicals used in consumer products enter our food chain and water supply.

Packaging - We reduce the disposable materials our dog treats are packaged in by offering a glass jar that can be reused by refilling on each order, reused for something new or simply be recycled.

Apple cores, peels, seeds and carrot ends – These are fed to our other “pets”, mainly the deer and raccoons that call our yard home. This reduces the amount of trash sent to the land fill.

Left over dough – It never fails that there are bits and pieces of dough left over once we have cut our Bubby Biscuits shapes.  We never throw these away.  We bake them and give these out as samples to our customers.

Electricity – We make sure our computer is powered down and lights are turned off when not in use. We use only CFL bulbs in our office.

In general, compliance to our Green Tail strategy significantly reduces our consumption of environmental resources.

Reuse

Customer Bags – Our green tails flutter with joy when we see our customers using their own canvas shopping bags.  When they are empty handed, we offer as a reused shopping bag plastic bread and tortilla bags we’ve collected from friends and family.

Glass jar program – We offer Bubby Biscuits in a reusable and refillable glass jar. We are working with locals stores on implementing a pick up and drop off reuse plan, which will allow our customers to reuse the same jar each time they buy their Bubby Biscuits.  In case you are wondering why we chose a glass jar, unlike plastic or paper, glass can be recycled indefinitely.  It does not deteriorate when reprocessed, which makes it the ideal material if you plan on recycling.

Computer equipment – Our tails were turned white and were tucked when our computer crashed a few months back.  We were able to get our green back by reusing three fold.  First, we purchased a refurbished computer.  Second, we gave the RAM from our old computer to a relative for reuse and third we donated the rest of the hardware to a company that refurbishes computers.

Festival Pop-up tent – Our first pop up tent crashed last year, but we have not thrown it out.  It is on hand for reuse.  We plan to salvage spare parts from the frame as needed and the tent will be reused as a tarp or ground cover.  The canvass bag that it came in is being reused as a storage bag.

Business Cards – When finished using our business cards, don’t throw it away.  We encourage you to pick up whatever book you are reading and use it as a book mark!

Recycle

Here is a list of items we recycle:

Paper, ink cartridges, computer equipment, batteries, flour boxes, glass bottles, plastic containers and cardboard

We encourage everyone to adopt a recycling strategy for their home and business.

 

Support and Foster Relationships with Local Businesses

Strong communities are built on personal relationships with friends and families that have a vested interest in the well being of each other.  Local businesses share in this vested interest because the owners are your neighbors, friends and perhaps your family.  The owners typically have a personal relationship with many of their customers.  Local business owners have the ability to immediately respond to the needs of their community due to this personal, intimate relationship.

Big box corporate chains are run by executives that live far away.  When money is spent on a homegrown, local company, it stays in the community.  When money is spent on big box corporate chains, most of it is funneled to the back pockets of the executives sitting in a corporate office far away.  These executives, especially in a publicly traded company, have no allegiance to the local families in the community.  They answer to their board of directors and shareholders.  Their vested interest is earning a maximum return on their shareholder’s investment and maintaining their good standing with the board, which set the bonus and salary amounts of the executives.

Often the big box corporate chains are lured to a city with the offer of tax breaks.  The tax breaks cause a tremendous burden on the local community.  First, the local businesses are harmed because they aren’t benefiting from any such breaks themselves, which means the big box chain is essentially running their business cheaper.  It makes it extremely difficult to remain competitive and eventually the local business fails.  Second, the tax breaks must be recovered from somewhere and in the state of Texas the taxes come from the homeowners in the community.  Not only do the breaks the big box company receives need to be recovered, but now that the local business has been driven to closure, the taxes they once paid are lost.  Again, the burden falls on the homeowners.  Any taxes not recovered become a loss to the local government.  This brings up the final burden, which is a reduction in city services.  With the tax dollars lost on breaks and local businesses that are no longer around to pay their taxes the city is then forced to cut police, fire, parks and other services.

If you pay a little extra for a local homegrown product, you are doing yourself and your community a huge service.

In the end, big box companies perpetuate the decline of a community’s character.   Hamburger Hill and Taco Hut become McDonalds and Taco Bell.  Ace and True Value Hardware become Home Depot. Dripping Springs, TX is lost and replaced by Anywhere, USA.

Bubby Biscuits is committed to supporting local homegrown businesses in any way possible.  So join us and wag your green tail!

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Reuse and Recycle Program

Bubby Biscuits is committed to being a “green” business that focuses on zero waste. Bubby Biscuits is now sold in 8 oz. environmentally friendly glass jars that are part of our reuse and recycle plan. The jar can be returned to Bubby Biscuits for reuse and refilling on your next order or the jar can simply be recycled.  There are several ways to return your jar for reuse - you can visit a participating store, return it to our booth at the Dripping Springs Farmers Market or leave it at the community table located inside Print Plus.

 

Participating Stores

The Big Drip
The Bountiful Sprout
Greenling
Dripping Springs Farmers Market
Print Plus (return store only - leave your jar on the community table and let us know either by email or phone)