Sustainability
Our mission is to create beautiful lighting that doesn’t cost the Earth. Our process has been evaluated from design and manufacture, right through to how our products live in your home, to ensure that we tread as lightly on the planet as possible. However, sustainability is a constantly evolving journey, and we continue to look for ways to grow and improve.
Sibling HQ
Our approach to sustainability starts before our products have even been created, in our London interior design studio, where our employee culture and daily operations aim to bring our environmental principles to life:
- The office is powered by 100% renewable energy
- We use energy efficient LED lighting
- Our old fabric books and samples get sent to a local charity who turn them into quilts
- All our staff use public transport to get to work
Materials
Our raw components are sourced in the UK where possible, and our specialist materials come from companies that are mostly local to the workshop. For example, our blown glass items are produced in East Anglia, Kent and Greater London, our organic artisan glass in the East Midlands; and our metal plating factories are within a 60-mile radius of the workshop. All our wood is FSC certified.
Production
Our products are made to order, which allows us to create beautiful bespoke lighting to your specification, but also means there is no waste, as there often is with mass-produced lighting.
Our ISO 14001 accredited workshop is in the north of the UK, with almost all production capabilities in house, which keeps our carbon footprint as low as possible.
Waste management
We have a ‘zero to landfill’ waste system in partnership with Veolia, in both our workshop and our London HQ. This means we recycle all card, paper, wood, glass and plastics, and any other waste that cannot be recycled is incinerated to produce energy.
At the workshop, our scrap metal and electrical cable waste is sent to a local metal recycling scheme, and we partner with AVC Weeeco Limited to ensure appropriate disposal of all EEE items (including batteries) along with quarterly submissions to the Environment Agency.
Packaging
The bulk of our packaging is sustainable and / or recycled and we are exploring how our workshop can become plastic-free within the next 3 – 5 years. The delivery partner we use for international deliveries ships predominantly by rail, which has allowed us to cut our CO2 emissions by 63%.
Regeneration
We recognise that it is not enough to simply be a sustainable business. We need to put back in to be able to turn the tide. Part of our workshop’s land has become a wildlife corridor under a managed meadow scheme – this encourages biodiversity and helps bees and pollinators. We are in the process of applying to be part of the Nature Recovery Network Delivery Partnership run through DEFRA as a commitment to help nature recover in industrial lands.
How you can help
The work that goes into reducing the impact our products have on the environment continues after they arrive in your home. Help us achieve our mission with a few small changes:
- Recycle your old lighting – When your beautiful new lights arrive, give your old lighting a new lease of life by recycling, rather than throwing it away. Find your nearest recycling point here.
- Recycle your lightbulbs – all lightbulbs can be recycled, but not in your domestic recycling. Find your nearest recycling point here.
- Recycling our packaging - the majority of our packing is cardboard, which is collected by most local councils as part of their routine collections. You can also take it to your local waste recycling site.
- Tell us how we can do better – We’re always trying to improve our eco-credentials. If you know of a way we can do better, we'd love to know so please get in touch via info@homeofsibling.com.