Our Journey to Find Sustainable Packaging
Our Scarlet Destiny products are not the only aspect to consider sustainability as packaging is also an area to incorporate our brand ethos. Whilst we of course don’t want to contribute to landfill, it’s not possible to sell and ship products without it which puts us in a difficult position. As well as this, packaging that is created from recycled material comes at a high cost. After weeks of research to find a company that delivers small quantities as well as elegant boxes for our pieces, we discovered mainly brown boxes which eliminates the luxury feel. Mail out boxes with print on the interior and printed tissue was considered, but we felt that this didn’t adhere to the aesthetic of Scarlet Destiny.
Our research led us to discover the Tiny Box Company who is founded by Rachel Watkyn, an entrepreneur who discovered in the search of ethical packaging for her fair trade jewellery range in 2007 that recycled packaging, despite there being a high demand, was yet to exist. Watkyn then started her own packaging company which was invested in by Dragon’s Den’s Theo Paphitis and Peter Jones in 2008. The boxes we have chosen for Scarlet Destiny are made of 40% recycled materials and have matte finishes which are fully recyclable as well as laminated finished that are recyclable once the outer paper is removed. There are 4 colours available and a luxury 1200-micron board. The chosen tissue paper for our products is also from the Tiny Box Company which is recycled, PH neutral, and resistant of running, bleeding, and fading.
After speaking to House Martin of London’s Martin Higgins, we were advised that we should provide an inner cotton bag for our jewellery as protection due to our products being of a premium standard. We concluded that we should use deadstock for this and have procured fabrics from LVMH for the initial run of the inner protector bags. However, our search for recycled or deadstock drawstring continues and is proving difficult, although we are hoping to source something very soon.
Our next issue to tackle was mailing packaging as sourcing something both sustainable and protective of the products demonstrates to be quite a challenge; most padded packaging has plastic bubble wrap, and although this can be reused, we aimed for something of a more sustainable material. Originally, we planned to use corrugated manila boxes that are commonly used in shipping, however the boxes were only available in sizes that were way too large for our products. We are always disappointed when a package arrives in an unnecessarily large box so of course this was not an option for us. Our search led us to look into mailer bags where we found a UK company that sell small quantities of compostable bags, however we soon discovered that they appeared to look like garbage bags which of course is not suitable for our luxury products. The company then suggested we use their ribbed eco envelope, although the downfall is we have to purchase a large quantity of these in advance.
Swing tickets is another area we have pondered about; are they necessary for the packaging? Samson from Shoreditch’s Afrocentric fashion store Soboye advised us that tags are taken off products prior to them being put on the shop floor and are therefore a waste of money and materials.
We then felt it necessary to wrap our boxes in grosgrain ribbon, trying to source recycled ribbon has been impossible, so we decided to use Berisfords ribbon, in the hope that you will reuse it?
Shipping is our next challenge which we are working on. What do you think about our efforts so far for our sustainable packaging journey? Is there anything you would like to see?
SD x
Image 1 sourced by: Alexander Schimmeck, Unsplash
Image 3 sourced by: Curious AboutAll, Unsplash
Image 3 sourced by: freestocks, Unsplash