Sustainability
What we actually do, including the parts that are unfinished.
We are a small workshop, not a certified B Corp, and this page is a progress note rather than a claim. It covers what we measure, what we have changed, and what we have not solved yet.
Tanning
Vegetable tanning, not chrome
Roughly nine out of ten hides worldwide are chrome-tanned for speed. We use bark- and water-based vegetable tanning instead: slower, more expensive, and it keeps the hide's natural structure, so the leather ages rather than degrades.
- No chrome salts in our supply chain
- Bark from managed European forestry, tanned within a few hours of tannin extraction
- Full traceability per hide batch, available on request
Offcuts
The offcut bin is the point
Cutting a wallet from a hide leaves more hide than it uses. Every offcut over a credit-card size goes into the keychain and tab runs; smaller pieces are punched into card slots and tags; the rest is sold to a local bookbinder. Nothing goes to landfill.
- Around 80% of each hide leaves as finished goods
- Offcuts smaller than a card become sleeve linings and dust tabs
- Sweeps are composted with a market gardener
Repairs
Made to be kept
The most sustainable part of a leather good is the one you never replace. We publish every pattern dimension, stock spare hardware indefinitely, and repair at cost for as long as we make the model.
- Patterns and dimensions published for each model
- Hardware stocked for every model, including discontinued ones
- Repair at cost rather than replacement pricing
Honesty
What we have not solved
We are a small workshop, not a certified B Corp, and we do not yet publish a full carbon audit. We publish what we measure and label the rest as work in progress rather than rounding it up.
- Per-hide traceability in place; full lifecycle audit still in progress
- Packaging is recycled board and paper tape, no plastic void fill
- Annual progress note, including the targets we missed
The most sustainable leather good is the one you never replace.