A conversation on environment with Marloe & James
Why is sustainable business important to you?
Sustainability is one of 4 Marloe Marloe brand pillars and is an important focus of ours as founders and producers. It is our duty to operate with environmental impact at the forefront of our decision making as we are producing consumer goods from materials that are taken directly from the earth. Trading goods in exchange for financial gain without consideration to how we are impacting the environment is a non negotiable for James and I and is a responsibility we do not take lightly.
It is a privilege to work alongside our Indonesian makers and support the community and contribute to work opportunities. Indonesia has been terribly impacted by Covid and to know that our makers are continuing to work and support their families, wider communities and economy is so important to us.
Sustainability is not just about the impact on the environment directly, we take a holistic approach that encompasses community also.
What is your background in sustainable business & how does this help the MARLOE MARLOE journey?
James has a background in environmental services that prevent plastics & pollutants from entering our waterways & the ocean. One of the key elements of that business looks at how we all can be more thoughtful in how our actions today can have consequences further downstream (pun intended). This business James also co founded and they collect data to inform future decisions.
By adopting those principles within MARLOE MARLOE we can break down each part of our business and identify what each part contributes both negatively and positively to the environment. We can also measure those impacts more effectively and use them to guide us towards our sustainability goals.
The words COMMUNITY & INTENTION are regularly used within the MARLOE MARLOE landscape, what do these words mean to you? How do they come into play for MARLOE MARLOE?
Community & Intention are core values of our brand and these words help to form our WHY. It is not enough to trade without consciousness & consideration.
Community sits under both our Cultivate & The Planet brand pillars. These pillars are our core values and where we chose to operate from as business owners. Cultivate is our commitment to accountability and transparency via open dialogue that connects both our customers & community.
The Planet is our commitment to sustainable business by way of our production choices, dedication to slow batch manufacturing , eco packaging and of course the partners we choose to work with.
Community feeds into both of these pillars as the people whom we work with and the way in which we work create the fabric that joins our business together. Without our community and intention we are not operating from a place of purpose.
Tell us, what steps is the brand taking to ensure transparency in the sustainability journey?
We have recently made a move to share and discuss more about our production practised by way of our Meet Our Makers series. This series will continue to deepen in conversations in the coming months and into the future. How we make our products and whom we make them with has a beautiful story and it's important to share that story with our customers. We are more than a business selling ceramic products.
We are working on staying connected with our community makers now that we are not able to travel and spend time together. Prior to covid James and I would travel 6 or 7 times a year to share time with our production partners and foster these relationships. We are working on capturing more footage of our making techniques and makers to share with our wider community. We are choosing to break away from the industry norm that hides their production out of fear of being copied or sharing our production partners.
As Head of Operations, James is working to transition our logistics partners to carbon neutral businesses globally. We are also working on setting up a base in Indonesia that will allow us to better control our down station operations that will ensure we are making the most sustainable choices across our supply chain.
As a business we are currently working with iChange to support initiatives that are close to our hearts. We are also looking at a multitude of other opportunities to reduce our carbon footprint and use of plastics all of which take time to ensure they are the right fit for our business type.
As we grow James and I want to ensure we are always pushing to be better and sharing the journey and choices we make with our wider community via our communication platforms.
What is the key focus for the brand over the next 12 months, in terms of your journey into leading the sustainable homewares space?
The key focus is ‘Building Strong Foundations’ & ‘Continual Improvement’.
We have evaluated our current practises and identified that focus toward continual improvement in our internal processes and how we operate is imperative to reach our future goals.
We are also focusing heavily on the continual improvement of our global supply chain and identifying problem areas that require attention. We have broken our chain down and have isolated the problem areas that we believe need to be addressed, these smaller issues have been arranged in order of critical importance.
We are also invested in the continual improvement of the livelihoods of the communities we serve. We are working on supporting and helping to address the plastics issue in Indonesia as this is where the majority of our work is crafted.
And finally, another of our overarching focuses is the continued attention toward sustainable practices on a whole within the Marloe Marloe business. The homewares industry is not yet regulated in the same way that the fashion industry is. So the changes we are making are not yet accredited but our hope over the next 3-5 years to see our industry adopt some of the same accreditations and industry standards as the clothing industry. We hope to be at the forefront of this adoption.
Read our full Environmental Commitment here.