Sustainable business

House of Products works on a daily basis to reduce its footprint. An enormous intrinsic need from day 1 and now a necessity. How do we do that? Below is an overview of what we do on a daily basis.

 

Our product: packing materials

We sell wrapping paper and everything that goes with it, such as stickers, tags, tissue paper and bags. Our range consists of 90% paper, which in our opinion is the most beautiful material available! Naturally, we must also protect this source well. That is why we have had the FSC certificate since 2015. We are audited annually for our responsibility and enforcement of the rules associated with this certification. In addition to this certification, we look further. For example, we are happy to donate to the Trees for All foundation by purchasing trees and we can now call ourselves an official partner of this foundation. When launching a new collection, in January and August, we always look for a fun gift that we send with our customers' orders. As a thank you for the beautiful order, as a surprise to our customer and, if successful, we will also make the world a bit more beautiful on a social level. Customer happy, we happy!

At product level, we always opt for a sustainable choice, even though this choice is always at the expense of our margin. A few great examples within our current range are our wrapping paper, which is made from Dutch sugar beet pulp and combining this with wood fibers creates a beautiful upcycling product. We are also very proud that we can sell stickers that are printed with water-based ink, contain biodegradable glue and are made of FSC certified paper. But we go further in this development. All our paper-based articles now come from FSC certified forests. Great result, right?

Did you know that every article has a detail field containing the sustainable properties included? Take a quick look!

 

Raw Materials & Waste

We try to preserve the value of raw materials for as long as possible and, above all, to respect them. We do this by preventing waste, we use products such as wrapping paper that we cannot sell because they have a defect as filling material in our shipments or we send them to our customers as a free gift and thus give everything a second chance. Naturally, we recycle and, apart from sealing pallets, there is no plastic in our chain.

What we do to reduce waste:

• We avoid surpluses and unsold products by purchasing smartly and we give written-off items a second chance by sending them to the customer as a free gift.
• We use wrapping paper with a defect as filling material in our shipping boxes
• We separate our waste
• We also recycle the boxes in which our items are delivered

 

Shipping boxes & transport

Together with our suppliers, we continuously work on making our packaging materials more sustainable. For example, by changing the design, so that less material is needed and by using recycled and reusable materials.

We work according to these strategic principles for our packaging:

• Innovative design: packaging smarter and with less environmental impact
• Responsible materials and production: use of materials from socially and environmentally responsible sources
  Some examples of our more sustainable packaging:

Some examples of our more sustainable packaging:

• We have carefully reviewed the number of box sizes for shipping items and adjusted them to 4 sizes, but because the boxes have folding lines at different heights we can easily fold back to the desired size or cut. We note that we send as little air as possible and because the box size is more compact, we can fit more boxes on a pallet. This in turn offers enormous advantages for transport.
• We choose to package our items as wrapping bags, block bottom bags and gift boxes for FSC® certified folding boxes. This way there is no glue or tape involved.

 

Tell us a little more about:

 

Sugar beet paper from Dutch soil!
The greenest paper on earth comes from the Netherlands. In fact, since the 2021 Autumn/Winter collection, House of Products is able to produce part of its wrapping paper collection using sugar beet pulp! The sugar beets are harvested in a 150 km radius around the factory. This saves transport movements and CO2 emissions. Sugar beet pulp is a residual flow from the production of sugar beets.

By doing so, we reduce our and ultimately your ecological footprint! In fact, sugar beet paper reduces environmental impact in several areas. From CO2 emissions and particulate matter formation to soil acidification. Less paper and less agricultural land are needed to produce this paper. And do we compromise on quality and ease of use? Absolutely not, the sugar beet pulp is a great substitute for wood pulp and it saves 16% with respect to the environment.

 

FSC®
Meanwhile, we go a step further, within our collection we can offer more and more products with a responsible character. For example, the paper we use in our range is FSC® certified, we recycle each shipping box over and over again, we use padding materials derived from rejected old rolls of wrapping paper and we do not use plastic when packing the shipping boxes. So we are an FSC® certified company and so are our products, but what does FSC® mean?

The Forest Stewardship Council® (FSC) is an international organization dedicated to conservation and responsible forest management worldwide. FSC® speaks of responsible forest management when the ecological, social and economic aspects associated with forest management are taken into account in a balanced way. FSC® has arranged this in a transparent manner. Partly because of this, FSC® is supported by all major environmental and development organizations. And in this, FSC® is unique!

Wood and paper products that come from an FSC®-certified forest are recognizable by the FSC® label. To ensure that products bearing this label actually come from a responsibly managed forest, all links in the product's supply chain must be certified. Only when, for example, a forest manager, paper mill, paper wholesaler and printer can demonstrate compliance with the FSC® rules can a product be sold as FSC® and the FSC® logo placed on it. The certification of these companies is done by independent certifiers.

 

Trees for All
But we look further down our chain, as we strive for optimization every day. As a partner of the organization Trees for All, we try to reduce our footprint, greening the earth and storing it. We plant trees through the 1-2 program, where we plant one tree in the Netherlands and one tree abroad. The counter now stands at more than 280 trees.

 

Donations
House of Products selects a foundation every season to which part of its turnover is donated. For example, we have already been able to make donations to The Pollinators, De Bijenstichting and Het W.W.F.
We'll keep you posted!

*Look for the FSC® logo for our FSC® certified products.