Sustainability is a matter close to our hearts. It accompanies us every day - from the first step of the manufacturing process to the distribution of our jewellery. What is particularly important to us? Saving resources during the manufacturing of our products, protecting our environment, but also social responsibility towards our employees. These three topics form the basis of our activities on the way to becoming a company that operates as sustainably as possible.
People
Social sustainability
We are proud of the close cooperation between our employees at our locations in Hamburg and Bali. Together we create high quality jewellery designs, which are then forged in traditional handwork, mostly in our manufactory in Bali.
Our own factory allows 100% transparency in production and gives us the opportunity to show you the origin of your jewellery. JULIE & GRACE is also a member of Amfori, an organisation that works to improve social and environmental standards in business. All our jewellery is made under fair working conditions.
Amfori BSCI Code of Conduct
Our production is regularly audited according to the BSCI Code of Conduct (Business Social Compliance Initiative). Our last audit took place in September 2021. This examines whether our company's processes, requirements and policies actually comply with the BSCI Code of Conduct. And they do. This includes ensuring that we compensate our employees appropriately and that we do not tolerate forced labour, child labour or discrimination in the workplace.
Because the well-being of our employees is very important to us, we attach great importance to comprehensive occupational health and safety both in production and in our offices in Hamburg and Bali.
Elbe workshops
At our Hamburg location, we have been working successfully with Elbe-Werkstätten for some time. We are therefore pleased to have two female employees who have become part of our team as part of an inclusion programme.
Female Empowerment
Unusual in Asian countries, but true: at our production site in Bali, almost exclusively women work in leadership positions. This is because we not only promote skills and potential to enable equality, we also place special emphasis on the compatibility of family and career. With our flexible working time model, our employees are able to develop professionally and be there for their families at the same time.
Planet
Ecological sustainability
It is a fact that every person and every company leaves an ecological footprint. Our goal is to minimise JULIE & GRACE's footprint sustainably and to be carbon neutral by 2022.
To achieve this, we want to reduce our CO2 emissions to a minimum. How do we achieve this? For example, by sending your order climate neutrally with DHL GoGreen. Our shipping packaging is FSC certified and therefore particularly environmentally friendly. From February 2022, our jewellery boxes will also be FSC certified and made exclusively from recycled paper. This means that our packaging can be disposed of easily and in an environmentally friendly way. Our jewellery bags will also be made of recycled cotton in the future, which means that we will forego the production of raw materials and simply reuse existing material.
In our offices we work almost exclusively digitally and therefore hardly need any paper. We use green electricity and have our drinking water from the tap treated by a water filter system. So plastic bottles are not to be found in our offices. Through our flexible home office concept, we try to reduce transport-related CO2 emissions.
Climate neutral shipping
As already mentioned, we send our parcels climate-neutrally with DHL GoGreen. In this way, we offset the emissions caused by shipping by supporting certified environmental projects. With our CO2 credits, we support climate projects such as wind energy in India, renewable energies in Brazil and the biogas programme in Vietnam.
Product
Product sustainability
For our products we only use precious metals such as 925 sterling silver, yellow gold, white gold & rose gold. Therefore, our jewellery is fully recyclable. All returned products are first checked, cleaned and in the best case resold. We melt down jewellery that is no longer saleable, because the precious metals can be completely recycled.
In the future, our jewellery will consist of 50% recycled silver and gold. Our long-standing production partners & suppliers are currently converting their production processes so that the proportion of recycled material can be steadily increased. The non-recycled portion will then consist mainly of LBMA certified silver and gold. Incidentally, the London Bullion Market Association regularly inspects the manufacturers of the precious metals on the basis of strict qualification criteria. We attach particular importance to this: When purchasing diamonds, we only consider KPCS-certified diamonds. The aim of the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme is to prevent the international trade in conflict diamonds by means of state certificates of origin.
Lean Production
Since our foundation in 2008, we have been producing on demand. This means that we only produce jewellery that you will actually buy. Because we want to save resources right from the first step of the process.
That's why we rely on the so-called One-Piece-Flow Management and thus on the continuous optimisation of our production and supply chain. In this way, we can also produce jewellery that is in low demand, avoid mass production and also keep our stock levels & space low.
There is still a lot to do...
Find out what else is on our agenda here.