Our Sustainability Promise
The specific things we do
There is a lot of loose language in this corner of retail. We would rather tell you exactly what we do, material by material, and leave the rest alone so you can judge it for yourself.
We start with what already grows
Mango wood is grown for fruit; our timber comes from trees at the end of their fruiting lives. Jute is a fast-growing annual that needs little water and no great help to thrive. Linen comes from flax, cotton from the field. Brass and silver are endlessly recyclable and always have been.
None of it is scarce, and none of it is plastic pretending to be something else. Where we use epoxy, we say epoxy.
Solid, not surfaced
A solid piece can be sanded back and re-oiled in ten years. A veneered or composite one cannot — once the surface goes, the piece goes.
The same logic runs through every range: real fibre rather than blended, real cloth rather than coated, solid metal rather than plated. It costs us more, and it is the single biggest thing we do to keep our work out of a skip.
- Finishes
Food-safe finishes on anything meant to meet food, so a serving piece can be used rather than admired. Nothing we sell needs a special cleaner.
- Packaging
Plastic-free wherever we can — and we say “wherever we can” deliberately, because a heavy table sometimes still needs corner protection we have not yet found a good alternative to.
- Small batches
We make to real demand rather than filling a warehouse and discounting what will not move. Slower, things sell out, and far less of what we make is wasted.
- Made, not tooled
Hand work needs no factory line, no mould and no tooling run. The energy in one of our pieces is mostly somebody’s time.
A piece that lasts twenty years is the most sustainable thing we know how to make.
What we are not claiming
We are not carbon neutral. We hold no environmental certification. We do not plant a tree for every order. If we ever do any of those things we will say so here, with the evidence. Until then, the list above is the whole of it.
If you think we could do something better, we would like to hear it — hello@earthmede.com.
