franka’s promise to Limiting our environmental impact

Electricity and Gas

The building we are in has solar PV and hot water. We try and use or charge our electrical equipment more on sunny days when we are generating our own supply. All of our other electricity and gas is supplied by Good Energy. The electricity is 100% renewable, generated here in the UK, and the gas is certified carbon neutral.

Plastic

We use plastic bottle-tops in the making of our jewellery. These are collected locally for us by friends, colleagues, neighbours and family, thereby limiting the number of “plastic miles” our raw materials have to travel. A percentage of our plastics is recovered on litter-picks, actively preventing them from entering the environment or the sea (we live on the south coast of England) via gutters and drains.

In the past we used plastic resin in our jewellery but in 2020 took the decision to no longer do so as we felt it was too damaging for the environment. 

Our earrings are 100% recyclable. When they reach the end of their life, please contact us so you can return them and in turn we will reuse the plastic in new products and recycle the metal parts at our local waste transfer station. 

Microplastics

Most of the micro-plastic in the seas today comes from sources such as fishing equipment, fibres from synthetic clothes and larger pieces of plastic litter being broken apart by the sun and the waves.

Our jewellery manufacturing process creates small pieces of plastic but we are fanatical about collecting them up and reincorporating them. This is possible for us to achieve because almost all of our manufacturing is done by hand rather than by machines.

Fabric

All of our clothing are all made from second-hand or pre-loved material which sourced locally from charity shops. We support charities as diverse as The Tear Fund, Tenovus, Marie Curie, Debra, Julia’s House, Lewis Manning Hospice and Sue Ryder. Fabric scraps are re-purposed in the manufacturing process and eventually when too small to do anything else with, are added to bags of rag that one of our local charity shops then sells to a rag merchant, raising further funds.

Recycling

We are careful to separate our recyclable waste from our non-recyclable waste, and to compost our foodstuffs. Cardboard goes into a local composting scheme rather than our recycling bin, as the latter is often sent abroad to be burned for energy recovery. We make frequent trips to our local recycling centre!

Water

We use harvested rainwater from our building’s roofs wherever possible - for rinsing t-shirts, washing plastic bottle tops and even for flushing the toilets. We also reuse household grey water for toilet flushing.

Transport

We use an electric car, public transport and sometimes the local bicycle hire scheme. 

Packaging

We do a lot of research into which companies can supply what we need with the minimum of additional plastic packaging, and give active feedback to suppliers if we feel they could improve what they are doing with regards to plastic. 

All of the packaging that comes with your Franka purchase is recyclable. The “thank you” notes have a print of some of Frankie’s original artwork on the back so if you want you can keep that and display it.