Our pieces by being waterproof stop the cycling of throwing out your favorite jewelry “only” because it would lose their beautiful color after a few usages.
But our efforts don’t stop on providing you jewelry that actually lasts. We also spend part of our resources making sure our supply chain, offices, packaging choices and daily habits reflect these values.
Being waterproof is not enough. We are committed to do more.
Stainless steel
Did you know stainless Steel is 100% recyclable? Some of its main components (chromium, nickel and molybdenum) can easily be separated from other materials, making the recycling process easy.Besides this, stainless steel is one of the least energy and resource intensive metals: being necessary to dig only up 2-5 lbs of ore for every 1 lb of iron and using only about 20-30 MJ/kg of embodied energy (according to an MIT study). And it isn't toxic, by itself.
PVD - The Green Coating Technology
When searching for a waterproof solution for our pieces’ coating, we focused on choosing the lowest environmentally impacting one. So, we are proud to be using PVD - Physical Vapor Deposition. When compared with other common options, like electroplating, painting and the traditional wet baths, PVD process does not create any of the hazardous waste.
Besides that, the colouring process does not limit the recycling value of stainless steel.
Do you know who else finds our packaging boxes super cool (besides you)? The Earth! They are made of 100% recyclable paper.
As part of our zero waste policy we also reutilize the returned packages when they are in good condition. Don't worry, in case this happens we always sanitise them properly.
What can be better than a form of business where you do your purchase online without having to dislocate? On top of this, this way allows us to have a better insight on our audience’s preferences and consequently a better stock management, avoiding excedents.
As we support conscious buying, we also don't offer pre paid return labels.
The benefits of working on an e-commerce basis don’t stop here. For us at Hey Harper, it gave us the possibility to perform different parts of the process in the same space. We assemble the pieces at the same place as we pack them ready for shipment. Our offices work in the same space: we find this to be an excellent energy saver and to drastically decrease transportation hazards. The possibility to pick up your package at our showroom adds up some points when talking about reducing our environmental footprint, too.
Overall, e-commerce uses 30% less energy than traditional retail.
To add better results in terms of sustainability we work with suppliers close to us: 75% of our suppliers are portuguese.
We love our planet enough to have this in mind in our daily lifestyle. On an office where all the electric appliances are Energy-Star rated and 100% of our lighting is LED based, simple gestures as the use of an individual reusable water bottle and the preference for cleaning products that are VOC (Volatile Organic Compounds) free are strongly encouraged.
Zero waste is what we are working for. Aside from recycling all packaging products and personal waste, we also don't waste the pieces that don't pass our high quality control standards.
By supporting a transparency policy, we urge to be extremely careful when choosing our producers and suppliers. Geographically, we try to keep them close so that we can monitor the practices as effectively as we can. However, we are not able to have a fully country-centered basis as for now, so we resort to our producers in China, who constantly assure that there’s no bad labour practices involved. As soon as we suspect that something doesn't go hand in hand with our ethics we will interrupt all the agreements effective immediately.
A small percentage of packages are returned to us due to incorrect shipping addresses. Small mistakes like forgetting to insert the apartment number, or typing the ZIP code wrongly can cost the Earth a big price, so we ask you to always double check your shipping details.
Accidents happen and if your pieces have been through rough conditions and, for example, one of the links of your necklace opened, please reach out to us. Don't waste it! We will be happy to teach you how to easily bring it back to life.
These are only two ideas on how we can team up to protect the environment. Share your thoughts with us at csr@heyharpershop.com if you think something else can be done. Sharing is caring… for the Earth!
