Sustainability at Mason Bros' Honey
Here at Mason Brothers’ Honey sustainability is crucial to us. Bees are like a canary to environmental change and we want them to thrive. We are constantly working to maintain Aotearoa New Zealand’s pristine natural environment. It's important to us to support biodiversity and ecological resilience; our beekeeping recognises the importance of bees and other pollinators to ecosystems and biodiversity.
In the beehives
We believe honey is best, thats why we leave 20+kg of honey on each hive, giving enough honey to sustain them through winter without mid-winter checks to feed supplements as is standard in many operations. They only need limited feeding in springtime during changeable weather.
We also don't overpopulate areas with bees as this often means not enough honey and pollen to go around leading to the feeding of less nutritious artificial substitutes. We believe this reduced artificial supplement feeding greatly improves the health of our bees.
In our Products
We pack all honey options into glass however we do also use plastic for many of our products. This is due to weight and breakage issues.
We use rPET(1) for many options. BPA free, made from recycled plastic (also readily recyclable). They're lightweight making them highly efficient to export/transport, they are also sturdy which limits breakage. Supplied by Pharmapac; Toitū Enviromark Diamond Certified.
Our Mānuka labels use Clarence paper facestock. This material is Forest Stewardship Council® (FSC®) Chain of Custody certified, features 30% post-consumer waste and is Green Seal certified.
At our Factory
We are replanting native and exotic trees on our parents’ farm and our HQ. These trees will sequester carbon as they grow, provide food for bees and native birds and be available for use in future beehive construction once they reach maturity. We also encourage our farmers to plant native trees on their land or allow marginal hilly land to revert to native bush.
All the water we use at our factory is rain water collected from roofs on our base. This allows us to utilise fresh rainwater from the Manawatu.
