Two things shape almost every decision we make about materials: what protects the spice, and what the hills we buy from would think of it.
Packaging
Our jars are glass with bamboo lids. Glass costs more than a laminated pouch and weighs more to ship, which raises our shipping bill and yours. We chose it anyway, for two reasons. Glass protects aroma in a way a laminated pouch does not. And bamboo is the local material — it would be strange to source from these hills and then cap the jar in plastic.
A laminated pouch is several materials bonded into a single film, which is exactly why it is so hard to recycle. Glass and bamboo come apart cleanly. The jar is also worth keeping and refilling, which a pouch is not.
How the spice is grown
Lakadong turmeric grows rain-fed on hill slopes in Jaintia soil, and it is dug by hand because the terrain gives no other option. There is no combine harvester on those slopes. This is not a sustainability programme we designed — it is simply how the crop has always been grown there. Our part is to not disturb it.
Small batches
We buy and pack in small quantities rather than holding large stock. Less spice sits in a warehouse losing aroma, and less has to be written off at the end of a season. It is a slower way to run a spice company and a less wasteful one.
Nothing added
No colour, no anti-caking agent, no bulking, no blending — and three government lab reports say so. Purity is an environmental question as much as a food-safety one: adulterated spice is spice that had to be grown, dried and shipped before being diluted with something cheaper.
What we do not claim
We buy from a cooperative in Lakadong, not from a farm we own, and we do not have equity arrangements with growers. We have not measured a carbon footprint, so we do not quote one. If any of that changes, this page will say so. Until then we would rather leave the space empty than fill it with a badge we have not earned.
Questions about any of this: aromawoodsllp@gmail.com.