For us, it’s important to keep this in mind every day and to align our practices accordingly. As the saying goes, we have to practice what we preach.
Curious to learn about some of the small actions we take that make a difference? Here are a few:
Reusing packaging materials
If you’ve ever ordered from us, you may have noticed this stamped on top of your package: “Maybe not as pretty, but so much greener.” That’s because we receive a huge amount of raw materials, packaged in a lot of (mostly new) packing supplies. We sort all of this material into bins so we can reuse it when packing your orders, hoping to give it a long and useful second life.
Sometimes we also bring packaging from home to reuse in your orders (especially Roxane, thank you for your dedication!).
We recently acquired a new machine that allows us to transform used cardboard sheets into flexible, stretchable cushioning material. Think of it as a kind of cardboard bubble wrap that helps us prevent damage when shipping fragile items like our candles and mists. No, it’s not the prettiest option, but we believe it’s worth sacrificing a bit of aesthetics for the planet.
Anything that can’t be reused is simply sent for recycling, something our dear Tania makes sure to take out every two weeks!
Second-life products
A few years ago, we set up a system to recover used containers. The idea is simple: you bring back your candle or mist containers, and we offer you a $2 discount on your next purchase of those same products as a thank-you for your effort. What happens to the returned containers? We clean them and use them to make new products. These candles are labeled “second life” and are sold (and sell out every year in record time—thank you!) at our workshop sale.
Imperfect products
At Flambette, our quality standards are quite high, I’ll admit it. We like our containers to be spotless, our candle wicks perfectly centered, and our labels nicely aligned. Sometimes, though, products don’t meet all our “perfection” criteria, and we have to set them aside, not without a little heartbreak. We know what it feels like to be picked last for the basketball team in gym class, and we don’t want these little gems to feel that way, or worse, end up in the trash.
That’s why we created an “imperfect products” section, where you can adopt these little misfits at a lower cost. A heroic gesture, really, that helps us avoid waste while allowing you to save money!
It may not seem like much, we know we won’t save the planet with reused cardboard boxes and imperfect candles alone. But we truly believe that big transformations are made up of thousands of small, intentional actions. Ours are still evolving, and we’re far from having it all figured out. But they’re real, and they’re present in every package we pack, every container we recover, and every product we choose not to throw away. And who knows, maybe these small actions will inspire bigger ones?
Thank you for being on the other side of these efforts. Because in the end, your actions matter just as much as ours.
