An Eco-Friendly Brand
Bombus is an environmentally conscious and eco-friendly company
Bombus is a small company. But we know the importance of how even an enterprise like us can have a huge impact on our environment. And we may not be able to change the world in one go, but as a brand we are doing our best to make eco-friendly choices.
The People
Our team is made up of a small group of individuals from across the generations. We are all local to our Kent based Oast House, meaning that commuting is minimal. In fact, most of the team are born and bred in Kent and live close by with their families.
Eco-Friendly Lunches
The Bombus Oast house is in the middle of a farm without a nearby shop or restaurant. For this reason the team members have no other option than to bring in their own lunches and snacks. We are provided with an excellent fully equipped kitchen, and the cupboards are always full of essentials to make sure we can prepare our meals properly. And we do! There is an ethos at Bombus that encourages healthy, nutritious, and planet positive eating. Every day you will find a member of the Bombus team sauteing a pan of (locally grown) spinach, or blitzing themselves a smoothie. Rarely will you see a pre-packaged sandwich or a ready meal at the Oast House!
Within the team we have a trained nutritionist, several fitness gurus, and a variety of different dietary considerations such as veganism, vegetarian, and celiac. Pre-pandemic it was normal for us to celebrate birthdays, and other festivities, in a rowdy and food-filled manner…and with so many diets to consider it meant that we have learnt how to cater to a wide variety of concerns. The result is that as a team we have shared recipes, ideals, and alternatives to the way we eat. We have all naturally grown to consider our food choices carefully, and to think hard about where our food comes from and what it does to our bodies and the planet.
distancing thrown in. And you can be sure that on many occasions there will be at least two, if not three different cakes…
one vegan, one gluten free, and inevitably one made entirely out of vegetables!
The Business and our Eco-Friendly choices
A Bombus Gift is for Life
Bombus began with our Director, Amelia, and her fascination with old vintage maps. Amelia hated seeing them languish unloved and unused, so Bombus was born as a way to revitalise and reuse these beautiful, underappreciated materials.
Our product catalogue has grown, but there is one thing that unites them. Our gifts are forever gifts. They are not a throw away product, or something that will wear out and go to land fill. Once you gift one of our meaningful, and thoughtful pieces…they stay with that person for a lifetime, if not longer.
Sustainability
Everything we make at Bombus is handmade. Each order is unique and made for that individual customer. We source our materials carefully and with the intention of being as ethical and eco-friendly as possible. There is still work to do, but we are always looking at how we can better our carbon footprint and promote local, ethical businesses as much as possible. For example, our bespoke wood frames and wooden keepsake products are all made from sustainable wood, certified by the forestry association.
When it come to eco-friendly services, we can’t get much more local than our carpenter, Roger. Roger works with us daily to provide and finish a range of our products, such as our bookends and decorative wooden letters.
Roger not only lives in Faversham…but his workshop is on the same farm as our Oast house! But more often than not, you’ll usually find him at ours making a cup of tea.
We may be a smallish team, but with an office and studio to run there are enough of us to create a certain amount of waste. To help off set this we use eco products for our cleaning and kitchen supplies, recycle as much as we can, and we even have a toilet roll subscription from a company that supplies plastic-free toilet paper!
Packaging
The greatest challenge for an online company when it comes to being eco friendly, is packaging. We have done a great deal of work on this over the past 18 months and have almost eradicated plastic from our packaging. Our aim now is to remove the very last scraps from our packing process. Balancing our environmental responsibilities with ensuring your gifts arrive in prime condition has been a real learning curve, but we are confident that by the end of this year we will be able to consider our packaging entirely eco-friendly.
It isn’t just about how it’s packaged, but how it gets to you is just as important! And we are constantly adapting how we send your gifts to you. We rely heavily on Royal Mail services here in the UK.
We will keep monitoring their progress on reducing carbon emissions.
The future of our planet
Our youngest team member at Bombus is 16. We know that we have a responsibility to make sure that our earth is protected for her future. And while we do our best, we also know we still have a way to go and a lot to learn. If you know of anything we could be doing better, or ways that we could adapt to be more eco-efficient…let us know. We strive for improvement, and we can only do that if we all work together for the benefit of our planet