Sustainability
Learn more about who we are, what we stand for and how we do business.
MADE IN YORKSHIRE
Our Studio
Our humble workshop in the heart of West Yorkshire where we design, make and package every order.
WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM OUR FRIENDS...
How We Do Business
Since 2014, Emily has strived to create a brand that has a symbiotic relationship with nature. We understand the importance of using processes and materials that do not harm the environment or the people involved in their production, opting to produce collections and operate as a business in a conscious and responsible manner.
Everything is designed and hand-produced here in the UK. Any parts of production that we can't do in our studio, we'll have done by local artisans and masters of the jewellery trade. This gives our products incomparable quality whilst supporting our local community of makers; ensuring a fair liveable wage for fair work.
Everything we produce is one of a kind or made to order, this ensures that we never overproduce or waste resources.
All processes that require electricity use 100% renewable energy sources.
By crafting on a small scale, you can rest easy knowing you're there’s little chance of you bumping into someone else with exactly the same piece of jewellery as you.
We work exclusively with two family run casting houses and two findings suppliers based here in England. Both are certified manufacturers and suppliers of recycled silver and fair trade gold.
Precious metal mining is one of the most destructive industries in the world, it can cause:
✦ Deforestation
✦ Biodiversity and habitat loss
✦ Water, air and soil pollution through the release of toxic chemicals.
✦ Displace communities
✦ Contaminate drinking water for eco systems and people, with mercury and cyanide
✦ Injury to workers
We use recycled metals because:
✦ It has equal quality to unrecycled precious metals
✦ By refining and reusing scrap metal, we are not mining.
We believe the only carbon we should be dishing out is in the form of diamonds, but until we can become 100% sustainable, we’ll donate 10 trees for every order.
We began our tree planting journey at the start of 2017 when the business was still in it's early days and donated one tree for every order placed via non profit One Tree Planted.
Since then our business has grown and evolved significantly, so we felt it was only right to expand our tree planting initiative too. We now pledge to plant 10 trees for every order in association with The Good API and The Eden Reforestation Project.
When you check out with your order, the donation is automatically deducted from us. Keep track of our planting initiative using the tree counter in 'The Numbers' section below.
Supplier Renewable Energy
Our casters also use Opus energy, a 100% renewable energy supplier
Their energy is derived from:
✦ 57% Wind Power
✦ 20% Solar Power
✦ 15% Bio Energy
✦ 8% Hydo Energy
Recycling & Refining
Everything from the metal dust on our work bench to scrap metal from production, is sent to our refiner Presman Mastermelt to be recycled. Mastermelt is EcoVadis Gold certified and is part of the CHWMEG Facility Review Program which promotes Responsible Waste Stewardship by supporting waste/recycling vendor management.
The refined metals are then resold on to recycled metal suppliers in the trade or sent back to us to reuse in our designs.
Reused and Recycled Waste
Everything from material packaging to office waste gets appropriately recycled on a weekly basis. We also try to reuse as much as possible, from repurposing plastic bags sent to us with findings for materials storage, to using left over lapidary water for our office plants.
We are partnered with Shopify planet, who donate a percentage of our sales to:
✦ Offer carbon-neutral shipping to our customers
✦ Support vetted projects designed to future-proof the planet
We also buy 90% of our materials locally, and the 10% that we can’t get here, for example our Opals which are imported from a family business in Australia, we’ll buy twice what we need to save long term emissions from shipping.
We source our packaging from a European supplier which specialises in the highest quality products made from recycled materials.
We think it’s important to not only be mindful of what our products are made of, but also what they’re packaged in.
All of our promotional materials are printed on recycled card and our gift wrap is made from acid free tissue paper.
We are proud to produce our lapidary work in house, offering a range of drilled and modified stone designs which are exclusive to our customers.
Over the past 9 years, we’ve been working on our production techniques to ensure we give our customers high quality products with minimal impact on the environment.
We drill using collected rain water sources and have created a special technique which allows us to reuse the absolute minimum water to drill our stones, without unnecessary water wastage or contamination. Any left over water then goes into our garden plants!
Over our decade in business, we have built relationships with both family owned businesses and established suppliers to the trade all over the world.
✦ 75% of our precious and semi-precious stones are sourced from UK businesses which adhere to The Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS). This process was established in 2003 to prevent "conflict diamonds" from entering the mainstream. We are constantly striving to find new suppliers who can provide stone origin and traceability.
✦ 15% of our semi-precious stones are sourced from small family owned and independent businesses located in Canada, America, India and Australia which we have personally vetted and built relationships with over the years. For custom cut precious stones like Sapphires and Diamonds, our suppliers adhere to the KPCS scheme and provide us with documented origin of stones.
✦ 10% of our stones are reclaimed, this means we use antique intaglios, gemstones taken from broken jewellery or we have hand cut left over gemstone from previous projects to use in new designs.
"After working in fashion for both high street and luxury brands, I witnessed first hand just how destructive the industry is on communities and the environment."
"I decided early on in my career that I needed to be completely committed to improving the supply chain and minimising the impact of how things are made."
"I don't want to make mass produced goods that will be part of a throwaway fad. I want to make jewellery that's special and built to be treasured for the next 100 years."
The Numbers
Keep up to date with our reforestation initiative and how your orders are funding innovative technologies fighting climate change.