Responsibility
In an effort to justify our existence as a studio producing objects the world never asked for, we take our responsibilities in setting a footprint as small as possible on Earth seriously.
Through buying recycled, recycleable and through recycling our own 'waste' we believe we are on the right path. We're still learning and always implementing new methods to reduce, reuse and recycle into the ancient crafts of throwing pots and blowing glass.
Below are some of our current practices we have in place to reduce, reuse, recycle and protect the planet we share together.
Keep it Local
Following the tradition of old village potters we produce and sell most of our designs in-house, the items are literally made right behind the store shelves in our Copenhagen HQ.
We invite our guests in to our store to buy a pot which hasn't travelled more than 20 meters from the warm kiln to the hand of its new owner.
We try to source most of our raw materials and cast items from as close as possible to us and preferably inside Europe. We purchase porcelain from Portugal, raw stoneware clay and clear glass from Germany, earthenware clay and pine wood from Denmark - all to avoid long container shipping journeys across the world.
It's not so difficult being green...
Being situated in Denmark allows us to source our energy from sustainable technologies, like windmills, which are situatied all over the country.
Our Green Electricity From European Windmills agreement with Danish energy supplier Ørsted allows us to operate with fewer black energy sources.
The entire studio runs on electricity and we are one of the few glass blowing hot shops not using gas in our furnaces or glory holes.
We fire our kilns at night in order to save costs and burden the local city system as little as possible. As the kilns are in our basement they keep the ground level floor warm in the winter, reducing heating costs in the colder months.
We are currently looking into possibilities of integrating solar energy into our production.
Recycling Clay
All clay bits that are trimmed off our potters wheels are collected, soaked in large floor containers, put on plaster plates, dried, resoaked and run though a heavy industry pug mill, - allowing us to save money on buying new clay and keep waste to a minimum.
Additional bits of extra clay are sometimes used for small sculptures, mini figurines, small bowls and other decorative goods.
All trash, mineral waste, broken pots and debris sink deposits are sorted once a month at the local recycle station for environmentally safe disposal.
We throw as little as we can away.
Items containing recycled clay
Recycling Glass
All punty break-offs, dropped tumblers and odd shards are sorted into colors and recycled either daily as part of the clear melt in the furnace, or as larger recycle melts if the glass is colored.
The colored recycle melt contains different minerals and oxides which has an effect on the final outcome, staining the recycled glass a beautifylly faint blue.
From these bluish recycle melts we produce our Echo Cloud line as vases, tumblers and special blue glow-in-the-dark Moon Stone Crystal Blobs.
If you own any of our glass items and they meet an untimely end, we can reuse the glass. Bring your broken item in and we'll reuse it* AND give you a 15% discount towards a new glass item.
* We can only reuse our own glass items. We do not offer repairs to broken items.
Items made from recycled glass
The Brick Project
Walking on the beach one day in Thy (Northern Jutland - Denmark), we stumbled into brick pieces in the sand, softened by the salty sea waves over centuries.
Old buildings across the Danish countryside have been left to decay and crumble into the ground and wash into the sea or become overgrown with forest, and so we started to source the Bricks from these sites as well as from beaches, fields, forest and even from old buildings being taken down in different Danish cities.
Each Brick is soaked in fresh water several times to rid it of potential salts that can damage our kilns. We then fire them (if they were found in damp areas) at 900° C to destroy any mold, seaweed, fungi or mortar that will disturb the absortaion of ceramic glaze.
After fully cleaning them, the Bricks are glazed in a myriad of earthenware glaze combinations, they receive a pair of eyes and are then fired to 1040° C.
The Brick, which was once discarded, left to disintegrate or simply abandoned has now been given new life. It may be a simple brick, but someone, at one time, made that brick out of earth and someone carefully built their home, farm, local courthouse, etc. with it. There's more to each one than meets the eye.
The Brick is a great decor element and conversation starter. It makes a great door stopper or paperweight. An old dog - taught new tricks.
Packaging
Almost all of our products are package free, but as they're of a fragile nature they need a good amount of protection when being shipped.
We avoid using plastic at all costs.
Our shipping materials consist of a healthy amount of recycled paper and cardboard. Our web order boxes are made with up to 70% recycled paper. The inner packaging is made with mixed paper from responsible sources. All of it recycleable.
Our web packing tape is made of recycleable craft paper and fiberglass thread - its also biodegradable.
We ship wholesale orders in a custom cardboard system made with mixed paper. Any bubble used in wholesale orders is recycled from deliveres we receive here at the studio. Our wholesale packing tape containsis 30% less plastic than regular tapes and is made with a bio-plastic material and waterbased solvent free acrylic adhesive.
All old documents and superflous prints, returned web boxes and papers are maculated and used as insulation and strength inside some of our shipping boxes.
To avoid more waste we don't giftwrap our in-store purchases with fancy paper, but add a barnded resuseable ribbon to the visually appealing protective wrapping.
