Our Sustainability Journey

 

When I founded Josephine Home, sustainability was simply at the core of our brand. My grandmother, Josephine, was a messenger of all good things ‘as they were meant to be’: using natural fibres and going back to traditional processes, honed over the centuries, which together carried a reassuring message of stability, longevity and safety. Was she early into organics? That is all she knew. So this is what she taught us: take from nature, sparingly and she will give back bountifully. Simple enough.

Thank you for joining us on our Sustainable Journey.
Founder & Director,

Our belief was that we should seek to find the extraordinary in the ordinary by re-designing every day products to uplift your daily experiences.  Respectful of our planet’s resources, we consciously decided to create products with as little obsolescence as possible. Products you can enjoy and love for much longer (if not for life) so you can play an active role in the greatest challenge of our civilisation as ever faced: guarding our planet and our lives from the threat of climate change.

  • Sustainably Sourced
  • Quality Control

Sustainably Sourced

It was at the forefront of every decision and every discussion with our carefully selected network of suppliers. These suppliers were chosen for their traditional craftsmanship and for their family or historical expertise in each of our product category: cashmere in Scotland, wool in England’s borders and cotton in Belgium, Italy and Portugal.


Quality Control

All the mills we use and with which we have built ties over the last 15 years, have the best accreditations, adhering to high standards: ISO 9000 (quality management) and ISO 1400 (environmental management).

All our organic cotton is GOTS certified (Global Organic Textile Standards) and have further accreditations such as OEKO TEKS, a testing, auditing and certification system focused on the limitation of harmful chemicals demonstrating in effect best practice within the industry.

The OEKO TEKS certification bans the use of hazardous chemicals such as chlorinated phenols, carcinogenic dyes, AZO dyes, allergy inducing dyes and Volatile Organic Compounds, so you must always ensure that any items you buy have been thoroughly tested and passed the OEKO TEKS test.

  • Cotton
  • Cashmere & Wool

Cotton

Cotton makes up 80% of our production. Water issues and their impact on sustainability are paramount for us. This is another reason why we believe in making products without any obsolescence built in, unlike many competitors who prefer churning collections to encourage customers to repeat purchase. We therefore ensure that our mills and suppliers follow best practices when it comes to the use of natural resources and water in their production cycle.

Cashmere & Wool

Wool & cashmere come strictly from the UK and Scotland. Our mission, from the start, was to support the extraordinary craftsmanship which has formed the longstanding heritage of Britain. As such it was critical to us that all our woollen and cashmere products be as local as possible. We went in search of the best yarn spinners and weavers that Britain could offer. From there, we began to develop our unique range with bespoke finishing and bespoke colours, rather than purchasing products from the mills’ stock.

It has always been important to us that we both leverage the artisan craftsmen and craftswomen’s skills to see how far we can stretch their know how (we love pushing boundaries and they don’t seem to mind as this is how we progress together and develop new finishes, new styles, new textures) and also that we offer our customer a totally unique product and a totally unique range.

  • Our Processes
  • Protect the Planet

Our Processes

Beyond the traditional ISO & OEKO TEKS certification, we believe that we go further than most of our competition by ensuring the longevity of our products and testing their resistance to the toughest of tests. These are run by independent laundry engineers who (literally) x-ray the products, tear them and generally pull them apart to find out how long they will resist to washing, pilling, rubbing etc.

We compare it to the American TV series CIS – a show based on forensic examinations to solve criminal investigations. We do just the same both pre launch and later on if a client comes to us with an issue. We can trace it all the way back to the source thanks to our engineers who are much more like investigators than anyone we have come across in ‘real life’. Once we get a ‘clean bill of health’ the product is then rolled out into our range. We also do random batch testing of products to ensure that each batch is consistent with the previous one.

Protecting the planet from Landfill


Ultimately the proof of our products is in the feel and in how beautifully they continue to age. Our wool and cashmere is so strong and durable, as well as sumptuously soft, you won't want to wrap yourself up in anything else.

Our bedlinen really does get better wash after wash! The longevity of your linen means not only are you investing in your sleep and well-being, but you are also investing in our planet.

  • Post & Packaging
  • In Progress

Post & Packaging

We have been continually working on our packaging and a few years ago decided to go much greener as we did not want the eco credentials of our products to be tarnished by wasteful packaging.

This is a delicate balance to find for the luxury industry since of the and important part of the joy of acquiring a new product lies precisely in its unpacking and unveiling.

Things have become a lot easier for smaller businesses like ours as suddenly the whole world is trying to ‘go green’ and better solutions are available.

One of the biggest challenges is choosing a delivery service that also does its best to protect our planet, whilst provising a global service we all need. Unfortunately there is no 'Bird Mail' or magical teleports, however we chose to use DHL to deliver our Josephine Home products to our customers.

DHL is a global company which has one of the most comprehensive programs in terms of sustainability. One of their main missions is to become carbon neutral. Learn more here.


Our Packaging Mission

  • Using outer brown boxes which are using recycled paper
  • Changing clear wrapping paper to a compostable clear wrapping paper
  • Ensuring the brown (Kraft) paper we use to gift wrap is from FSC sources (sustainable forestry)
  • Our grosgrain ribbon is re-usable (this is the only man-made fibre in our entire range!) and we are working on finding a suitable eco-friendly replacement. This represent less than 0.005% of our production.
  • We have changed the outer sleeves which protect our products individually (for bed linen items which are packaged individually) to plant made plastic which is 100% biodegradable and compostable.
  • We have changed the cardboard inserts we use to keep our linen in their neat shape as we store and send it to you. The inserts are all made of recycled, un-dyed brown paper
  • We have changed the branding sleeves which surround our products to recycled un-dyed brown paper and we are using eco-friendly, non-toxic dyes.
  • All our marketing collaterals (flyers, sample booklets) are made of eco friendly paper: recycled, FSC and using eco-friendly non-toxic dyes.

TALK WITH TRACE PODCAST

What's more, we were featured on Australian Podcast, 'Talk with Trace' and our Director, Stephanie Betts tells the story behind the brand, and our pledge to the planet to be as sustainable as we can be.

WATCH BEHIND THE SCENES

Sit back and relax and enjoy the Josephine Home journey. Watch your products come to life, first as our sustainably sourced our fabrics which are then are transformed and handmade by our skilled craftsmen in Europe. All our products are made super soft and strong enough to last a lifetime.

  • Journey of Our Bedlinen
  • Making of Geelong Throws
  • Discover our Cashmere
Every thread counts. We are always trying to seek out the finest European craftsmen and the very best raw materials to produce our bed linen. Take a glimpse behind the scenes and discover how our bespoke bed linen collection is made.
As you unwind underneath one of our throws, have you ever wondered how exactly it was made? Let us take you on a journey from the very beginning of the process through to the moment they are ready for snuggling.
How do we get our cashmere so soft? From the purest Scottish waters to 150-year old machinery, discover that there's a lot more involved than initially meets the eye.