Sustainability at Postery
At Postery, we are committed to having minimal impacts on the environment while human rights and social principles are respected. We are aware that our business operations have an impact on the environment. Therefore, we aim to take responsibility for our actions to ensure our products are made responsibly. At the core of our decisions, we always consider the people and the environment.
For Postery, sustainability means “buying better, keeping forever”. In other words, we want to offer responsible products that consider the three pillars of sustainability with the highest quality to keep the items for a long time. And this throughout the whole supply chain of our products, from sourcing the wood for the frames, for example, to how the consumers take care of the products.
Our mission is to have minimal impacts on the environment while workers implicated in our supply chain are fairly paid and work under working conditions aligned with the different conventions of the ILO and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Postery’s mission is to increase transparency and traceability throughout the whole supply chain. We are committed to sharing every part of our supply chain with everyone to know how and where our products are produced and their journey to arrive at the consumer door.
We are aware of how important it is to offer sustainably made products, and this goes with having sustainable materials. For us, sustainable material means products that are certified with highly recognised certificates such as the FSC® certificate and meet our high-quality requirements for consumers to keep them for years.
We know the importance of using sustainable materials. We also know that we still have a journey ahead of us regarding this matter. As wood is the primary raw material we use, both for our prints and our wooden frames, at the moment, we consider the FSC® labels to be the most important for us.
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Paper
All our posters are printed at the same factory located only a few kilometres from our warehouse. We use MultiDesign® paper, a high white premium wood-free paper. By wood-free paper, we mean that the wood pulp has been bleached, so no yellow lignin remains.
The paper we use for all our prints is 240g/m2 to offer a higher quality, better printing result and for the print to last longer as it is thicker.
All our prints are FSC® MIX certified, have the Nordic Swan Ecolabel, and are Elemental Chlorine Free (ECF).
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Wood
Wood is an essential material for Postery as we offer a wide range of wooden frames. Our regular range of wooden frames has no sustainable certificate yet. We are currently working on upgrading this range to FSC® MIX wood. However, our premium range of wooden frames is FSC® MIX certified.
We use pine wood for our black and white wooden frames, both regular and premium ranges. For the oak frames, our regular range is made of massive oak, while the premium one is made of pinewood with an oak veneer.
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Aluminium
We also have a wide range of premium aluminium frames. Even though aluminium is not the most sustainable material, it can be recycled indefinitely. Indeed, when it is molten, its properties do not change. Moreover, it is the most widespread metal on Earth.
In the near future, we would like to have sustainably certified aluminium and incentivise better our customers on how to recycle and reuse their aluminium frames to ensure they are used as long as possible or recycled correctly.
The Forest Stewardship Council® (FSC®) is a global, not-for-profit organisation dedicated to promoting responsible forest management worldwide. FSC defines standards based on agreed principles for responsible forest stewardship supported by environmental, social, and economic stakeholders. FSC® helps take care of forests and the people and wildlife that call them home.
To learn more, visit www.fsc.org
Since most of our products are made from wood, having FSC ® certified products is crucial for us, but most importantly, by choosing your FSC® certified products, customers are supporting responsible management of the world’s forests. We are proud to say we have the FSC® trademark to promote our FSC® certified products correctly. The FSC® label means that materials used for our FSC® certified products have been responsibly sourced.
There are three different FSC® labels. FSC® MIX means that the labelled product is made from material from well-managed FSC®-certified forests, recycled materials, and other controlled sources. While FSC® 100% means that wood has been harvested to benefit communities, wildlife, and the environment. The third FSC® label is the FSC® recycled. This label means that the forest-based material in this product is recycled.
To ensure our products are made under fair working conditions, we wrote our code of conduct – The Postery Code of Conduct.
Our code of conduct is based on the International Labour Organization (ILO) conventions, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.
The Postery Code of Conduct defines minimum sustainability requirements that all business partners working with Postery must meet and agree with. This code of conduct shows Postery’s commitment to being recognised as a sustainable, open, and trusted company throughout the whole supply chain of Postery’s products. This code of conduct sets the basis for our approach when making decisions to achieve responsible sourcing of our products.
The most significant social risks we have identified relate to working conditions. We want to ensure that the factories we are buying from respect fair working conditions such as having decent working hours, paying at least the minimum wage, or having the right of freedom of association.
The Postery Code of Conduct has 11 principles to ensure fair working conditions. Below is a summary of our principles.
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1. No child labour
We do not tolerate child labour in any production sites manufacturing goods for Postery.
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2. Employment is freely chosen
All employees manufacturing goods for Postery must have chosen their work freely.
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3. Legally binding employment relationship
All suppliers must ensure legally binding employment relationships with their employees established under national law and industry standards. -
4. Transparency
All suppliers must be transparent and be willing to share documents related to the production of the goods, such as the employees' working hours. -
5. Decent working hours
Workers manufacturing products for us shall not work more than 48 hours per week and shall have at least one day off every seven days. -
6. No discrimination
Postery does not tolerate suppliers to discriminate in recruiting, wage policy, admittance to training programs, employee promotion policy, policies of employment termination, and retirement. -
7. Fair remuneration
All suppliers must pay their employees at least the legal minimum wage applicable to national and industry standards. -
8. Freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining
All suppliers must let and recognise their employees to form, join or not to join trade unions, bargain collectively, seek representation and join workers’ councils per the national law, industry standards, and international conventions. -
9. No corruption
Postery does not tolerate any supplier engaging in or endorsing any form of corruption, directly or indirectly. -
10. Health & Safety
All suppliers working for Postery must provide their employees with a safe and hygienic working environment and promote the best occupational health and safety practices according to the industry and any specific hazards. -
11. Managing environmental issues
All suppliers shall implement and maintain an environmental management system to minimise environmental impacts. The Supplier shall take adequate measures to reduce negative impacts on the environment.
At Postery, employees are considered one of our most valuable assets and are at the core of the company’s future. Postery head office is in central Gothenburg, the second-largest city in Sweden. Most functions of the business are operated from there. From creating our prints by our Art Directors, taking care of our customers through the Customer Care team, creating content for our products and campaigns, maintaining our online shop, supervising the supply chains to, of course, incorporating sustainability in Postery’s everyday and long-term goals.
Postery implemented the Postery Office Stewardship. A document to encourage employees to apply best practices when it comes to sustainability. This document aims to show employees which practices to implement to reduce Postery’s impact on the environment. This document states how to recycle at the Postery head office, minimise water (such as not allowing single-use bottle water) and paper use, and reduce energy consumption.
Another essential part of Postery is our warehouse, located only a few kilometres from our head office. Employees working there are crucial for Postery’s success. All orders are carefully packed by hand and sent to our customers.