Iron Heart UK Initiatives
We have carefully looked for areas in our service provision where we could apply greener logic. Our customer service experts are the team responsible for handling all inbound and outbound logistics. They worked with our creative team on producing a sustainable and bio-degradable packaging solution, which would not compromise on quality.
We use organic ink for the graphic used on our mailer bags, which themselves are made from 100% recycled paper. The outer packaging, needed to make the parcel waterproof during transit, is a bio-degradable green mailbag made from recycled materials. Contained within this packaging, along with your lovely Iron Heart goods, are our care guidelines which are printed on responsibly sourced FSC paper.
We consciously do not offer free returns, we try to reduce the amount of items shipped by proactively engaging with our customers to help them with sizing, to avoid shipping duplicate sizes and a return shipment. Charging a realistic amount for returns coupled with our proactive outreach, focuses our customers on actively trying to order the correct size first time around. This does take more time and effort, but we provide all the help we can give both on the product webpage and with personal follow-up. Of course, even with our combined efforts, we can't always get the fit correct, but over time our loyal customers do get a great understanding of the sizes and styles that work best.
Clearly, as Iron Heart goods are made in Japan, and our customers are all over the world, even with efforts to reduce the quantity of goods shipped unnecessarily, our carbon footprint is high. We have spent the last year working to achieve carbon neutrality under the PAS 2060:2014 certification. PAS 2060 is the internationally recognised specification for carbon neutrality, setting out requirements for us as a business to achieve this by weighing our carbon usage, doing everything we can to reduce it, and then offsetting what remains. So far, we have offset 617.18 Tonnes CO2e with the World Land Trust.
The certification has been awarded to the Island to Island Group which is the parent company of both Iron Heart International and our sister company Sonder Supplies. You can view the certification here, and the PAS 2060 Qualifying Explanatory Statement here.
As part of our RE:LOVE program, we said 10% of the money generated from these sales will go to charity. The Blue Marine Foundation is a charity dedicated to restoring the ocean to health by addressing overfishing, one of the world’s biggest environmental problems.
As detailed above, we will offseting the carbon we are responsible for our shipping and all other business costs. The methods of offsetting will focus mainly on reforestation and similar initiatives, so we felt it was important to have something focused on the ocean as well. So far we have donated $12772 to the Blue Marine Foundation.