Ethics

We’ve made some pretty lofty ethical choices in this little business. And whilst we’re not quite perfect yet, every single decision we make, from the packaging tape we buy to the leather hides we use, is made with purpose and is the best environmental and ethical choice we can make at that particular time.

Packaging

At checkout you have options on how you’d like your order shipped. You can either choose:

Brand new packaging

We use kraft paper and card which has a high % of recycled paper within. All of our new packaging is plastic free allowing you to scrunch it up and place it in your home compost pile. This includes the paper tape, wrapping paper and/or cardboard box.

Of course, if you can reuse any of this material yourself first, that’s even better!

Reused packaging

When available, we can send your order out in clean, used packaging if you’d prefer.

This might be reused Amazon boxes or shipping bags, or cardboard envelopes.

It will still be paper based but may contain strips of old plastic packing tape, remnants of old removed shipping labels etc.

We choose to pass on any plastic and bubble lined mailers to other small businesses to reuse as they just make us sad.

PLEASE NOTE: if no choice is made at checkout, we will send your parcel out in the new packaging option.

 

Shipping labels

At this time the best option for shipping labels we have is to use thermal printed shipping labels. Sadly these are not recyclable or home compostable and must go into general waste.

However please note that the thermal labels we use are BPA and BPS free.

 

Leather 

All leather hides used are waste from the beef industry*, so no animal is harmed just to produce these products.

As leather eventually decomposes, it will return to the soil unlike ‘vegan’ leathers which are made of plastic and will last indefinitely. 

*If animal skins aren’t turned leather, they would end up in landfill which brings about more ecological issues.

Veg tanned or chrome tanned?

We only use leather that has been ‘veg’ or ‘vegetable tanned’. This means that the cow hides are turned into leather using the tannins naturally found in some plant material.

The other, cheaper type of leather available is known as ‘chrome tanned’. This takes much less time to tan an animal skin into a leather hide, and it is done by soaking the skin in a noxious bath of chemicals.

This can result in dangerous ecological waste at the tanning site, nasty side effects for the leather workers and some sources say also for the customers that ultimately purchase the item.