Green & Black's Organic Responds to Consumer Complaints of Excessive Packaging

Green & Black’s organic, the Cadbury-Schweppes owned organic chocolate brand, has had to defend itself against customer complaints that is it using wasteful packaging for its ice-cream sticks.  According to BrandIndex, Green & Black's organic admitted using excessive packaging to add a “luxury” twist to its products.

In response to our inquiry Green & Black's Senior Brand Manager Gemma Wookey commented on the BrandIndex story.  “As a quality food brand, our packaging needs to strike a balance between protecting the product inside, and maintaining our ethical credentials.  Some of our products are more fragile than others, and we have an obligation to our consumers to ensure that if they pay for a premium product, it will be intact when they open it.  We’re currently conducting an audit of all our packaging, and our consumers can be rest assured that we’ll continue working to find the best packaging materials available, while minimising our impact on the environment.”

According to Christina Hull of Serendipity Communications, the firm that handles Green & Black's U.S. PR, the ice cream sticks that led to consumer complaints in the UK are not available in the U.S. only the brand's pints of ice cream are sold here.

Products similar to the Green and Black's organic ice cream sticks are sold here in the U.S. by other companies.  Most notably Ben & Jerry's who sells frozen ice cream cones boxed and packaged for a single serving.  The packaging on the Ben & Jerry's Cherry Garcia ice cream cones appears to be similar to the Green & Black's organic ice cream sticks.  We are unaware of any consumer complaints regarding the Ben & Jerry's product.  Ben & Jerry's, while not advertising organic products does label all their products as all natural. 

Green and Black's organic is highly rated on BrandIndex, which provides a daily measure of the public perception of more than 1,100 consumer brands.  The company has received high scores for General Impression and Satisfaction. However according to their rankings there has been a slight drop in the brand’s “Buzz” score recently.  "Green and Black's success has been built on its ethical reputation and they need to be carefully not to alienate ethically-aware consumers on issues like packaging," BrandIndex reported.