Circular

An increasing number of voices are coming together to call out a clear, resounding and powerful message: sustainability is not just an option. Of course, it isn’t just a marketing strategy either. One of those labels used by companies, whatever sector they are from, with the sole aim of not losing out on a market that demands they are eco-friendly.

However, those of us living in the countryside, off the countryside and for the countryside are very clear that sustainability has never been just an option. The countryside is tough and demanding, subject to circumstances that are impossible to control. Having your feet on the ground and getting your hands dirty aren't rhetorical devices here. Andalusian farmers know this only too well. Centuries ago, we learned to live in harmony with the countryside. Because the countryside is much more than our livelihood. The countryside teaches you that giving and receiving is the same, exactly the same: without balance, there can be no life. And sustainability aims to maintain this essential balance.

We have always known that we are nothing more than a link in an immense natural ecosystem. And as such, we have learned to behave ourselves, as members of the most impressive and sophisticated mechanism that exists: nature and its processes. Nobody is more aware than women and men from the countryside of the fact that we are just a part of these processes. And that, without having respect for our environment, without respect for the ground walk on and that sustains us, there can be no progress.

We make full use of the olive

We are well aware that innovation, technology and progress don’t necessarily mean pollution the diminishing of natural resources. At Loxa we know that technology - and culture - is also the plough and the pole for picking olives, the baskets from the harvest or the stones from the mills. Times change, they move fast and the demands of the market increase every day. But the principles don’t change; beyond the simplicity of ancient tools or the balanced stainless steel alloys of the new oil mills, the essence is the same. An essential principle is that, just as has always been the case in farmsteads - and still happens today -, here nothing goes to waste. It is the ever-lasting and valuable lesson offered to us by the Andalusian countryside.

Sustainable bio-economy: giving back to the olive tree what the olive tree gives us.

This is the lesson that solidifies in Circular Loxa: giving back to the olive tree everything that the olive tree gives us. A true circular economy, fruit of the joint collaboration between expert olive farmers from the cooperative and the university.

Use and circularity

It has been proven that olive trees respond very favourably to being fertilised with the high quality compost produced by the cooperative itself from the waste coming from the oil production. Being 100% sustainable is an increasingly achievable goal and perfectly possible. Among other innovations, a plant has been launched for the recovery, clarification and marketing of the olive stone as a standard quality biomass to make biofuels. In addition, we also work on processes of recovery, recycling and reuse of waste and by-products from the olive grove.

That’s why we never get tired of saying that sustainability is not an option, but an obligation to our environment, our land, our olive trees. It is a question of respect, of knowing we are part of a whole that we have to look after. That whole, the environment, the countryside, sustains us and gives us life. We look towards the olive tree as an equal, a brother, the way you look at a wise old gentleman for whom you feel a deep and sincere respect. An honourable gentleman, though strong and vigorous after years of coping with the onslaught of the outdoors, who doesn’t just keep his wisdom to himself.