Our Impact

Sustainability & Ethical business Practices are the core foundation of our business. We all have a role to play to be a powerful catalyst for change.

As a Fair Trader, we are pledged to the 10 principles of Fair Trade. These principles provide the framework for action.

  

What positive changes have we delivered so far? 

Fair Trader of Australia 

From inception, we have believed that a business can redefine success to build a more inclusive and sustainable economy. While we knew we are doing steps in this direction, we wanted an external audit for this. As a result, we went through the process with Fair Trade Association of Australia and New Zealand.

In August 2021, we were endorsed as a Fair Trader of Australia by Fair Trade Association and we are super excited. This gives confidence, visibility and transparency to our customers, producers and partners that we would invest our effort, time and energy in accordance with 10 Fair Trade principles and would always keep our community and planet first.

We invest heavily in social, economic and welfare initiatives for our artisan community. This includes support for their children's education, medical camps, and capacity building training. The below picture shows some of the children who have benefitted from tutoring classes, and distribution of water filters in a village.

 

Responsible production

We use renewable, or upcycled raw materials for making our beautiful homewares, jewellery and garden accessories. We try to select raw materials based on their suitability, practicality and end of life options. Thus we never use materials like plastic and encourage use of sustainable sourced materials like mango wood, cloths, scrap metal.

 

 

Charitable Giving 

Since the last quarter of 2021, we have been collecting donation from our customers which we match at the end every calendar year for supporting Greening Australia. Greening Australia is a registered charity that works to address Australia’s environmental challenges so that nature and people can thrive. They are able to put millions of plants into the ground, recreate and relink thousands of hectares of habitat, protect endangered species and offset thousands of tonnes of carbon emissions every year.

You can read our charity policy by clicking the link.

Environmental Stewardship

Aksa accepts its corporate sustainability responsibilities and is committed to environmental stewardship and the need to work towards sustainable development. You can read our environmental stewardship policy by clicking the link.

 

Lowering our packaging & shipping footprint

Reducing waste is important to us and it starts right from the manufacturing process until the product has reached its end of life. 

We along with our Fair Trade artisan groups take a number of steps in this direction. We have worked with our suppliers to ensure that products are not packed in individual soft plastic sleeves and are shipped to us via sea freight in cardboard boxes with either cardboard or shredded paper as space filler.

We keep minimal branding on our products and never use plastic tags or stickers. We do not add any packing slip or invoice to avoid paper wastage.

We make use of compostable mailers that are certified home compostable by B-Corp certified The Better Packaging Co. or Hero Packaging in a bid to ensure that we continue to provide compostable mailers to our customer and we partner with a company which shares our beliefs and values.

We ship orders via Australia Post which offsets carbon for all of the deliveries handled by them.

We aim to make it frictionless for consumers to dispose of parts of the product packaging through household/council recycling. Our wood products are easily recyclable at the end of their life. Any metal products and our product packaging (hex wraps, carton box)  are also recyclable via local council programs. Our product packaging like the compostable bags from Hero packaging or The Better Packaging Co., address label and tape can be thrown in the home compost. 

We wish to let our customers know that they can pass on our products and other items should they wish, to others in their local community via their local Buy Nothing New Group. The mission of Buy Nothing New Groups is to build community and connect people through local gifting. You can find out more via the buynothingproject.org where you can find the app. There are many Buy Nothing New groups on Facebook which you can join.