Ethical Sourcing Policy
OUR SUPPLIERS
All of the Great Little Trading Company’s branded products are designed in Britain. Many of these are made and supplied by factories based in China, India and Vietnam, while others are made in Europe and the UK. Even though they aren’t directly part of the GLTC team, we care about the workers who make our products so we only source our products from factories proven to provide good and fair working conditions. We aim to create beautiful, practical and long-lasting products which means we only work with factories that are focused on providing the high levels of quality products we want to supply to customers. Our suppliers are continually monitored through regular visits from us and third party auditors to make sure that working conditions are safe, workers are being fairly treated and paid correctly (according to local regulations) as well as having excellent quality monitoring systems.
We invest heavily in testing our products to ensure they meet legal requirements, are safe and outperform customer expectations, so when we say our products could become family heirlooms we mean it. This is only achieved by working closely with our suppliers to ensure the very best products are made for affordable prices.
Should improvements be identified we work closely to support suppliers on improvement projects.
SUSTAINABILITY & ENVIRONMENT
As a retailer that provides products for parents and children, it’s important to us to do our bit to minimise the environmental impact of our business and help preserve our lovely planet for the next generation.
Our green team, made up of representatives across several departments, endeavours to promote eco-friendly practices and is examining ways to make life at our head office as green as possible. Currently we recycle as much as we can, encourage staff use of our GLTC reusable coffee cups and shopping bags, and donate discontinued product samples to nurseries or schools. Our aim is to continue looking at ways of working which are as environmentally friendly as possible.
Brochures filled with lovely ideas on how our beautiful products can be used in family homes are regularly posted to our catalogue subscribers. These printed catalogues are an important way for us to help inspire our customers but we do understand that they have an environmental cost, so we have removed the plastic wrapping around them saving 4000 kg of plastic a year. We are also looking to print our catalogues on recycled sources of paper so not only will it be possible to recycle them once our customers are finished browsing, they’ll also be sourced from recycled materials.
We are working hard to regularly assess and review the packaging used for our products. Reducing the amount of packaging we use, as well as making it easier for customers to recycle our packaging by making changes to the materials it’s sourced from, are key targets. Unfortunately we haven’t been able to remove all plastic from our products and packaging but we are working on reducing the amount as fast as we can!
Sustainable sources of wood and paper based products are key to our evolving sustainable initiatives as we make much of our product from wood and much of our packaging is paper based. On this front we have embraced the EU timber regulations which require all wood and wood based products to be traced back to forest source and proven to be from sustainable, legal sources. The international wood market is complex and it can be particularly tricky when we use mixed wood products such as high quality MDF or Plywood but we are working hard to ensure clarity and full traceability is established from our original sources. The good news is that this means GLTC products are often made using off cuts of wood from other industry activities, limiting the amount of wood wasted. This means most of our toys, furniture and accessories are fully recyclable. Many of our cardboard boxes are made from recycled paper, therefore are also fully recyclable creating an eco-friendly cycle.
We’ve kick-started our journey to making our business more sustainable and look forward to continuing this positive work in the near future. Watch this space for updates!