Where do we still have work to do on sustainability?
At Form we aim to be as transparent as possible about how we run our company and the environmental impact we have.
Previously we’ve talked about the sustainability aspects of our products and company before, from the recyclable/biodegradable materials and 200%+ carbon offsetting to eliminating plastic from our packaging. Today we’re going to talk about where we are not as sustainable as we’d like to be and where we still have work to do.
Shipping by air
When our products are shipped from our factory to our warehouse, we only ever ship by sea and ground which emits low carbon per km per kg. However occasionally when we ship from our warehouse in England to a customer in a faraway country, this may be shipped by air. While we fully offset this carbon, in an ideal world this mat would travel by ground and sea only.
At some point, we would like to open warehouses in North America and mainland Europe, nearer to our international customers, allowing us to avoid air for nearly every single mat sold.
End of life - closing the loop
All our products are designed to last years and years; unlike most companies, we believe the less frequently you buy from us the better! While our Travel and Pro mats are recyclable and our Onyx mats are recyclable and biodegradable - we can’t control what physically happens to these mats at the end of life, they could be placed in the wrong bin or not processed as efficiently as possible.
One day we would like to accept mats back at the end of their life and manage the recycling and biodegradation ourselves.
Outer cartons sealed with plastic tape
This is a relatively small change but every little helps, right?! When we produce your mats we ship them to our warehouse in cardboard cartons of 4 or 6. Normally these are sealed by strong packing tape, which is often made of plastic. Our individual mat boxes inside (the ones you receive) are sealed with biodegradable tape meaning the boxes can be composted if you wish - we’re currently investigating options for packing tape-strength biodegradable tape to seal the outer cartons with.
While you won’t ever see this difference (unless you buy 4 or more mats) it’s important we eliminate single use plastic completely.
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