Sustainability

At Winning Goods, we try our best to be as sustainable as possible. Here are some of our thoughts and goals regarding our business and sustainability practises that we will endeavour to stick to wherever possible.

↦ Is leather a sustainable product?

We believe that leather as a material can be sustainable. Leather products, when looked after, can last over 100 years. At antique markets you can still find leather bags, accessories and even desks with leather writing surfaces that are decades old.

↦ What about wastage?

We treat leather as a valuable resource, and aim to minimise wastage as much as possible. When producing a bag, or umbrella sling, offcuts can be large enough to be repurposed into smaller products and projects. Offcuts can also be used to make prototypes.

At the end of a product's life cycle, when disposed of correctly, leather will biodegrade. Winning Goods prefers the use of vegetable tanned leather. This is literally leather that is dyed using natural vegetable dyes to tan the material into the various beautiful hues that you can find in our products.

We also use solid brass whenever possible with Winning Goods products, as brass is a metal that is strong and non-toxic to the environment upon disposal. If a product is faulty during production, we will remove the brassware and reuse it - whilst also repurposing as much leather as possible.

↦ Why not vegan leather?

At the moment, vegan leathers are a fantastic endeavour, but are still, for the vast majority of options, comprised of plastic. Bioleather is largely a marketing term, and all these leather alternatives do not hold up to the lifecycle of a real leather product. Real leather bags can last decades, whlist a majority of vegan leather brands' bags have a much shorter lifespan. They are also harder to repair.

A fantastic article that explains the hidden cost of 'vegan' leather can be found at this Guardian Article:

‘We are creating a material monster’: the false logic of faux leather [Article by Tamsin Blanchard].

↦ Packaging

We endeavour to use recycled materials with our packaging, and use plant-based and biodegradable inks wherever possible, too. We minimise our use of plastic wherever possible during production, storage and packaging.

 

With every stage of growth that Winning Goods has gone through in its short history, sustainability has always been a key pillar of decision-making. As we continue to grow, this will never change.