If there's one thing I'm learning on this journey of setting up our own organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil project, it's this:
when you don't have a huge budget or funding that takes away all your headaches, every step becomes a small battle. And believe me, this month the battle has a name: packaging, bottles, caps, labels, and shipping boxes. It sounds like something purely aesthetic, but it's much more than that. It's the skin of our oil, what protects it and presents it to the world, and choosing it well is crazy.
The first thing we knew for sure was what we **didn't** want.
And on that blacklist, plastic was number one in capital letters. It's not just a matter of principles, although that too. Our EVOO is produced organically, with an almost obsessive respect for the land and an environmental impact that we want to be minimal, aiming for K0. It really grated on us to take such good care of the olive trees in the field and at the oil mill only to then bottle that liquid gold in plastic. But also, experience has given us strong reasons. EVOO simply doesn't keep as well in plastic as it does in glass or tin; it's a living product, and plastic doesn't protect it from light and oxygen in the same way. And if theory wasn't enough, practice has given us the definitive push: we've had more than one upset with transport companies, who have crushed plastic bottles in shipments. So, plastic, directly discarded.
That said, the real puzzle begins.
Because here, unfortunately, money does matter, and a lot. When you're starting out, you face the harsh reality of testing. You'd like to order samples of ten types of glass bottles, five models of tins, caps with different designs... but each test costs a pretty penny. Suppliers require minimum quantities to see the products firsthand and do real tests, and those orders, even if small for them, are a very high budget for us. It's a vicious circle: you need to test to avoid making mistakes, but testing costs money you don't have to spare.