Eggs with a world title
In 2020, they won the award for the most sustainable company in the Netherlands. With innovations for both chicken and egg, Kipster aims to achieve the most people-, environment- and animal-friendly chicken house in the world. Since its inception, the company has been certified for On the Way to PlanetProof. We speak to Ruud Zanders, former poultry farmer, one of the founders, and number 2 in Trouw’s 2018 Sustainable 100. He tells us more about certification, environmentally-friendly eggs, and the only real Kipster chickens.
Did you know this?
Kipster chickens lay white eggs. That’s because Kipster keeps the Dekalb breed white. You can tell by a chicken’s earlobes what color eggs she lays. If she has white earlobes, she lays white eggs. If she has pink or red earlobes, she produces brown eggs.
Closing cycles
The four founders – Olivier Wegloop, Maurits Groen, Ruud Zanders, and Styn Claessens – knew that the production of eggs had to and could be done differently. The environmental impact is high, partly due to CO2 emissions from energy use, the agricultural land needed and the water used for feed. Kipster, therefore, uses residual streams as a food source. “What we are doing en masse is giving good food to animals, while we can also feed ourselves with it. Our chickens get food made from residual streams that we humans cannot or do not want to eat.” Think, for example, of leftovers from bakeries. In addition, the requirements of the quality mark On the way to PlanetProof, as well as the 3 stars of Beter Leven, offer support in the creation of the company. On the very first Kipster eggs in 2017, the logos were already on the packaging.
Healthy chicken, sustainable egg, happy you
Kipster sees chickens as animals with needs and instincts. By nature, chickens are woodland birds. Kipster has created a natural, indoor, wooded environment on the farms with daylight and fresh outdoor air inside. The animals do not like open plains and rain. If it were up to the chickens, they would melt from it. There is also outcropping around the farm. The aviary system minimizes the emission of particulates. Ruud: “Furthermore, our solar roof with almost 2,000 solar panels supplies more energy than we need ourselves, we don’t use fossil fuels and we are the first in the world to produce CO2-neutral eggs.”
Where to buy
In the Netherlands
Do you want to eat more sustainable eggs? You can buy them at Lidl. In a self-designed, sustainable packaging. The innovative boxes are made of potato starch and are therefore easy to recycle. Did you know that the box is even listed as the most sustainable box in the world in the London Museum of Brands Packaging and Advertising? You can also find the eggs in the Efteling amusement park and they are used at Kwalitaria and Delifrance.
Want to read more about Kipster? Click here.
