You may have seen our earlier blog post detailing our dedication to building a sustainable, planet-friendly business. This continues that theme, looking at areas we have started to make changes in and some of our current practices that we're most proud of.
By now you've probably already heard that buying from small, local businesses is usually more eco-friendly than mass production, but why is that? So just to name a few reasons…
- As crafts people with a small supply chain and chain of command, we’re not trapped in large production processes or tied to uber-restrictive budgets. We have the power to choose our production methods and to take direct action in order to make a positive change to our ways of consumption.
- Generally less waste and by-products are produced in small manufacturing processes. In our case, our products are almost custom-made because we create our papers and our books as you order them.
- By nature, each marbled paper we make is unique, one-of-a-kind, so we hope that makes our products more precious for those who take them home. And we want our customers to know that we find joy and fulfilment in what we do and that even a small purchase is a big victory for us as it allows us to carry on doing what we enjoy.
- We try to avoid waste at all cost, by keeping, reusing and repurposing our raw materials as much as possible. For example, we use the marbled papers that we make during our workshop demonstrations or when we trial new colourways and turn them into book covers. We use all our offcuts to make into pencils and other small objects.
- Wherever possible, we reuse the packaging we receive from our suppliers (when we order materials etc.) to send out our wholesale and other large orders.
- Some of the inside pages of our books are made from recycled paper. We also used to make our marbled papers (with which we cover our books) from recycled paper, but we soon found that this paper was quite vulnerable to general wear-and-tear, so we opted for a more durable FSC certified paper instead.
- We are currently transitioning towards compostable alternatives to plastic packaging. For example, we send your alum and carrageenan orders in clear compostable bags, and we've switched to compostable tape too.
- It's also important that we use up all the materials we currently have before switching to better alternatives to avoid unnecessary waste being sent to landfill.
