Environmental Ethos
At Inca UK, we strive to deliver the best in hair accessories and gift packaging while doing everything we can to care for the environment.
We are doing our bit to be as responsible as we can through every part of our business including sourcing, manufacturing, importing, handling and dispatching. As well as being an issue that we feel very passionate about, ecological awareness is fast becoming an important part of how all of us shop and we are doing everything possible to be ahead of this curve within our supply chain and product area.
See how our products and methods reflect our values and the ways in which we are doing our part...
Our Aims
Working to source the best in high quality products for our market, we as a company are trying to be as ecologically responsible as possible within our products and supply ethos. The way in which we source our products is dramatically changing and is part of an ongoing evolution. Our range is, of course, made of up of a wide variety of pieces created out of metal, paper, plastic and fabric. We, of course, test all our metal and plastics to comply with EU standards and eliminate toxic cadmium, lead and nickel where possible and are currently looking toward new materials that are 100% natural or biodegradable/compostable. This is an approach we are hoping to roll out over many of our categories and though it is taking time to implement, with these materials currently being scarce in our area of the market, we hope our customers will appreciate what we are working towards.
What are doing currently;
Carbon Offsetting
At Inca Jewellery Limited we carbon offset every bit of our UK business and all of our shipping from the far east. (Our UK delivery company DPD is already Carbon Neutral)
Using Carbon Footprint’s business calculator, we analysed how much carbon we produce as a company at our UK warehouse and through the shipping of our goods from China. We hope to be completely Carbon Neutral in the future including all product production, this is a long term aspiration and we are taking steps towards this, so keep updated for any changes.
![]() ![]() The scheme we are using to offset our emissions is approved by the QAS (Quality Assurance Standard). The scheme works to plant native trees through schools, educating children about bio diversity and environmental issues, and increasing long term C02 reduction through photosynthesis. Please click here to read more.....
Buddying in Brazil
For every tree that we pledged, a tonne of carbon will also be saved in the Brazilian Amazon via the VCS avoided deforestation programme. In this way, we will be offsetting carbon, planting and protecting forests and biodiversity in 2 continents. Please click here to read more.... Tree
Fabric
Our next step is to introduce more natural cloths including cotton and linen into our scrunchies, alicebands and other fabric-based lines. We are working with factories to create a demand and also availability across our area of the market for these materials. Created using the flax plant, linen requires fewer resources to grow and manufacture into a finished product and is one of the most sustainable fabrics available. Currently scarce among makers this will change over time with the increase in our demand. Molly & Rose will soon see the launch of it’s cotton hair accessories range, which alongside lending itself really well to our designs in quality, feel and finish will allow us to acquire a different ethos of product.
Gift Packaging
Nearly all of our gift packaging is completely recyclable, apart from the foam inners of our gift boxes, though we are hoping to find an alternative for these in the future. Most of the paper we use is un-waxed and without finish so can be put in most at-home recycle bins. These sit alongside our high-quality jute and cotton drawstring bags, which are completely natural products and hence can not only be recycled/reused but also are biodegradable.
Warehousing and import
For many years, on the dispatch and warehousing side of our business, we have not only used all recycled boxes to dispatch our goods but also acquired solar panels to harness some of the building’s electricity consumption. As well as installing LED lights, we have also committed to extensive office-wide power-saving practices to reduce our in-house energy consumption levels and initiated a rigorous recycling scheme all with environmental concerns in mind. Always importing our products by sea also alleviates excess carbon emissions on worldwide shipments.
Product Packaging
We are reducing the amount of plastic packaging used to protect all of our products. We have already stopped using internal PP bags on all re-orders of gift packaging stock alongside pushing for biodegradable PP bags in the future to use across our entire range. We will continue to use internal PP bags on some of our hair accessories where necessary for items which may tarnish or scratch during shipping. We reuse our PP bags in house and have a recycling scheme in place for these.
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