How we lower our impact

All human activity has an impact on our surroundings, and therefore all business activity too. Verdonce is an ethical, sustainable business so how do we minimize our impact? The materials we use to make our sustainable homeware need cultivating and processing. We use electricity to power our sewing machines. Finished products have to be packaged and transported to you, our customers.

It’s about the choices we make

In life, as in business, it’s about the choices and decisions we make. We believe it is possible to be a sustainable, ethical business and have a positive impact on our surroundings. We want to help you enjoy a more sustainable home and help you leave your positive mark. No living being should suffer to make our sustainable homeware. The planet should not suffer. In fact, we should strive to leave the planet better than we found it. That’s why from the very beginning we are a zero waste business and only use natural vegan fibres.

Thinking about sustainability holistically

With this holistic sustainable mindset we constantly examine all our business processes, looking for ways to do things better. Our goals is to minimise our use of natural resources and to maximise our impact for good. We run a circular economy business and use circular economy design.

Roughly speaking our business breaks down into four areas:

• Sourcing sustainable materials: We work exclusively with natural vegan fibres like recycled cotton sourced from local suppliers.
• Design & production of our sustainable homeware products: We do all our design, production and testing here in Spain.
• Transportation, packaging and logistics: We don’t use any plastic in our packaging, ship Carbon Neutral internationally , and use our bike for all local trips. To clean we use natural products like bicarbonate of soda, white vinegar and mild soaps in our premises.
• Communication with our customers & collaboration: We run a zero waste business. As well as helping you reduce your waste at home, we reduce our own waste, CO2 emissions and energy consumption. We use 100% EKOenergy certified renewable energy and in doing so contribute to the UN Climate Fund. We maximize the lifespan of our electronic devices and we even geek out about minimizing the resources used by this website by working with Siteground, a hosting partner committed to sustainability.

UN Sustainable Development Goals

The Sustainable Development Goals are a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet and improve the lives and prospects of everyone, everywhere. The 17 Goals were adopted by all UN Member States in 2015, as part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development which set out a 15-year plan to achieve the Goals.

Verdonce is fully committed to these Sustainable Development Goals. We belong to the Agenda 2030 initiative for Small Businesses in Spain, which is a forum for small businesses to share experiences and learn from each other. We constantly evaluate ourselves against these goals and contribute in our own little way to achieve them.

Recently, we participated in an Agenda 2030 diagnostic with COPADE and we are putting in place a specific Plan of Action to contribute to the achievement of Agenda 2030. One of our proudest achievements is the participation in the Knitting a Future project with local woman at risk of exclusion. This contributed our full achievement of the following Sustainable Development Goals:

• 4 Quality Education
• 5 Gender Equality
• 8 Decent Work and Economic Growth
• 10 Reduced Inequalities
• 12 Responsible Consumption and Production

We are living on the planet as it we had another one to go to

Terry Swearingen. Nurse from Ohio, awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize in 1997.

What is sustainability?

Although it seems relatively new, the concept of sustainability appeared for the first time several decades ago, in 1987 to be precise, in the Brundtland Report presented by the Brundtland Commission (formerly known as the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED). The Norwegian doctor Gro Harlem Brundtland, analyzed the situation of the world at that time. He showed that the path that society has taken is destroying the environment. At the same time it is leaving more and more people in poverty and vulnerability.

What does sustainability really mean?

Sustainability means satisfying our present needs without endangering the ability of our future generations to satisfy theirs. You might be wondering if there is anything you can do as an individual to avoid Brundtland’s bleak forecast. The good news is yes! To achieve sustainability we must commit to sustainable consumption.

Sustainable consumption

Sustainable consumption means consuming in a way that does not harm future generations that will live on our planet when we are no longer around. You may be thinking … well I already consume responsibly because the products I buy are not harmful to the environment. Of course, that is all very good, but sustainable consumption also means rethinking our model of consumption and lifestyle. Why? Because the current consumption model is causing a huge deterioration of the planet due to the overproduction generated by large industries. But that’s not all. This type of consumption directly affects our health. Increasingly processed food, packaged in damaging materials, such as plastic encourages the appearance of various diseases in living beings.