?? The Check-Out: Jane Firth, Vegetarian Express

It’s a big week in the FTF camp…We’re turning 4! Feel like celebrating with us? Tomorrow we’re partnering with Patagonia to host our first event in Manchester - A Love Letter to Community. We can squeeze a few more spaces and would love to have you there!

Before we get ahead of ourselves, there’s no time like the present, and today we’re sitting down with Jane Firth, Sustainability Manager at Vegetarian Express and an industry OG with stints at household names like The Body Shop. We’re also running through a couple of job openings that have caught our eye, some Good News that’s lifted our spirits, and events you may just see FTF team members at. Let's get to it...

6 questions with Jane Firth, Sustainability Manager at Vegetarian Express.

We’d love the non-LinkedIn lowdown on who you are, what is Vegetarian Express focused on, and what you were doing before you were making the planet cooler (both meanings intended)?

I’ve always worked for quirky British businesses with heart, I honestly don’t think I’m cut out for anything buttoned down and formally corporate. I started out as a product development chemist at Nikwax waterproofing a long time ago, then I moved to The Body Shop for 20 years, working in Quality, Regulatory and finally spent 6 years in Sustainability. It was a great grounding in what sustainability can be in business. I really feel like I’ve landed on my feet with Vegetarian Express, where the mission is to “fill your plate with plant-based goodness”.

It’s all about providing great ingredients to chefs, providing them with ideas and inspiration to make amazing food – that just happens to be plant-based. We have a recipe portal called Seed-bank, created by chefs for chefs. It currently holds over 600 plant-based recipes; all including method, nutritional and allergen information, plus environmental impact information. What makes this business proposition so powerful is that gaining market share isn’t just good for us—it’s good for the planet. With plant-based food having a lower environmental impact than meat, this is a rare win-win where growth drives positive change.

How does Vegetarian Express think about sustainability? Any impact-related milestones or achievements you’re particularly proud of?

Sustainability has always been at the heart of Vegetarian Express. Certified as a B Corp in 2019, we’ve gone even further, improving our score to an impressive 96.3 points on recertification - a fantastic achievement. Before employing a Sustainability Manager (me) the team had already done so many great operational activities to reduce carbon emissions, the most exciting of which kicked off just before I joined last year where a project was launched to switch all delivery vans from diesel to HVO (Hydro-treated Vegetable Oil). When exploring alternatives to fossil fuels, we found that electric vans weren’t viable - current batteries can’t handle refrigeration and multi-drop delivery mileage. HVO emerged as the best solution. Now, our vans literally run on used cooking oil! It’s a fantastic initiative that not only supports a circular food system but also significantly reduces our operational carbon emissions.

Tell us about Future 50 Foods, I never heard of them until I visited the website and, now I'm intrigued!

Future 50 Foods is a fascinating report put together by WWF and Knorr foods which outlines “50 foods for healthier people and a healthier planet”. The idea is to improve the food system by championing delicious, nutritious foods with a lower environmental impact - foods we could be eating more of but often overlook.

It’s about promoting the diversification of our diets to improve human health and benefit the environment at the same time. The Future 50 foods range from algae and leafy greens to beans, grains, nuts, seeds, mushrooms, and root vegetables.

As we don’t supply fresh fruit and vegetables we are unable to provide the full fifty, but we are proud to be able to offer 19 ingredients from the list - from amaranth to wakame, and all manner of beans and pulses in between, our stock of Future 50 ingredients is continuing to grow. The Future 50 report gives us a good basis for broadening the food horizons of our customers. Knowing that it's better for all of us as well as the planet, we’ve made a conscious effort to include them in more recent recipe inspiration available on Seed-bank.

What kind of projects are you sinking your teeth into right now in your role?

It is an incredibly exciting time at Vegetarian Express. I’m currently developing our new sustainability strategy. My hope is to create a strategy with doughnut economics at its heart, that prioritises appropriately through double materiality assessment and that supports our B Corp recertification while also providing our customers with the carbon reduction targets and emissions data that they are asking for. It's all doable, it's just a lot! Providing our customers with the data and the products that they need is absolutely key for us, so there’s a lot of baselining and validation in my future to make sure our data and our product range is really good. It’s all about getting the foundations right and prioritising properly to ensure we’re serving our customers, our environment, our people and our business to the best of our ability with the resources we have.

Ok, magic wand time; if we could grant you three wishes for the food industry, what would they be?

1. I wish more people knew how to cook delicious, nutritious plant-based meals. Even chefs aren't taught how to cook plant-based meals at college, never mind kids at school or people at home. British cuisine has had meat at its core for so long that most people who learned how to cook from their parents don't generally have plant-based recipes in their repertoire. If I had a magic wand, I'd want everyone to know how to cook well so they weren't restricted to always having meat as the centre of plate, primary protein in a meal. Imagine the overall health improvements if everyone understood nutrition and could cook! It would be revolutionary for the food and the health systems.
2. Farming for regeneration, not for short term efficiency gains. We only have one planet, with finite resources, and yet we treat it as a bottomless pit for consumption at the lowest possible cost. Food is so fundamental to society, not just for fuel and for health but for community and connection too, we should treat it with the value it deserves, and consider the long-term sustainability of our farming systems, the soil health and water availability. I don't know how we'd do that in the current economic system, but this is a magic wand wish after all!
3. Immediate action on carbon reduction throughout the food supply chain. There's a lot of talk around reducing carbon emissions but not enough real action happening. If I could wave a magic wand, I would definitely rebuild the whole system to invest in low carbon solutions to help protect our food supply from the seemingly inevitable disruption that we now face due to climate change. People are so far removed from understanding where their food comes from, they don't realise how at risk their morning cup of tea or coffee is as the crops are under serious pressure from shifting climate patterns.

Finally - We’d love some recommendations; one climate-related resource, one person to follow online and one consumer brand that’s killing it!

• Climate-related resource: A handy free climate updates newsletter comes from Greenspace. It's a useful, regular, climate related newsletter. It's certainly worthwhile having it land in your inbox.
• Person to follow online: Nick Brown, ex-owner of Nikwax waterproofing and Paramo Directional Clothing (he sold both companies to the staff when he retired in 2022) he now runs Green Levers, working in the social and climate space, particularly the protection of forests as carbon reserves in South America. I've known Nick a long time, having worked for him over 20 years ago at Nikwax. It's where I started my career and where I learned that businesses can be run with care for people and planet, and not just for shareholders. I've only ever worked for companies with a similar ethos since then. Nick has always had close personal and professional connections with South America, and he's always been very conscious of the environmental and social impacts of business, so his drive to protect the people and forests of that region is understandable.
• Consumer brand that's killing it: Bird & Blend are one of my current favourite brands, not just because they have an extraordinary range of yummy teas and infusions, but because they put their best foot forward with their regular SustainabiliTEA panels for local businesses in Sussex, and the way they have had people and planet at the core of their business values since they first started. I really get the sense that they walk the walk, not just talk the talk.

Huge thanks to Jane for chatting with us! Keep up with her work on LinkedIn.

?? Maison SASSY | B Corp and Little Moons announced they are both B Corp certified! ?? SOJO have partnered with Paul Smith to bring both online and in-store repair services to consumers.

?? neat. released the UK's first refillable foaming body wash in three new scents. One refill can last up to 55 washes, with no single use plastic in sight.

?? MANGO have partnered with Materra, the regenerative cotton and tech company, to produce capsule wardrobe items made from regenerative cotton. Mango’s cotton farmers in India will collect soil and crop data via Materra’s digital platform, called Co:Farm. This will aid transparency and allow Mango to monitor indicators like fertility, soil health, number of nutrients, use of water, machinery and pesticides, size of the plot used and more.

?? Virgin Media O2 announced that they'll be donating 12,000 reused devices collected through their O2 Recycle service in 2025 as part of their commitment to creating a circular economy.

?? Circ, in collaboration with Canopy and Fashion For Good, launched the Fiber Club to facilitate brand access to recycled fibers and promote supply chain integration. This initiative aims to accelerate the adoption of next-generation materials in the fashion industry.

Follow us on LinkedIn for a fresh digest of Good News every Friday. Have good news? Share it with us - [email protected]!

Jobs in CPG x Sustainability

• London, UK - Global Sustainability Assistant Manager - Plastics - Unilever
• London, UK - Head of Sustainability - Huel
• London, UK - Lead Technical Consultant - Foodsteps

Events

• ?? 11th February - Following the Footprints x Patagonia: A Love Letter To Community
• ?? 13th February - From Corporate Carbon footprinting to Life Cycle Analysis - Carbon+Alt+Delete - Virtual
• ?? 4th March - The Carbon Trust label directory: Leading with transparency on green claims

Got more room in your calendar? Events Calendar!

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Until next time!

Team FTF?