sustainability

GREEN AMBITION

SUSTAINABILITY

Crafted Consciously

We at Wandler want to be better. We are proud of producing beautiful, high-quality designs, but as a company in the fashion industry, our role and responsibility go beyond that. However, change takes time. It means reflecting on our actions and inner workings, prioritizing the most important steps to be taken.

For Wandler, those first steps encompass a look into the quality of the leather, its production, leftover leather, and packaging. They include tending to our close relationship with our suppliers and working with them to create more traceability and transparency.

It is still a work in progress, an ongoing effort of measuring, learning, and improving in the process of taking on our corporate responsibility. Even though we may never achieve perfection when it comes to sustainability, we are motivated to continue taking steps.

Sustainability is a synonym for high-quality, durable, and long-lasting items

QUALITY

Our intention is to create true investment pieces with high-quality leather that will be loved and passed down to new generations. We provide first-rate customer service, through which we can review their feedback, allowing us to refine our products as well as reduce and prevent future defects. This way, we work to ensure that our products can stand the test of time.

TRUE CRAFTSMANSHIP

Since 2017, we have been producing our bags at Pelletteria Graziella. This Italian factory resides in Riviera Del Brenta, an area known for its high-end leather manufacturing industry. We have built a personal relationship with the owners and all their craftsmen producing our bags. They are passionate about their craftmanship and production, a passion which is evident in the details of each of our products.

MADE IN VENETO, ITALY

OUR LEATHERS

Leather comes from animal hides, which normally are by-products from the food industry. Killing animals solely for the purpose of crafting fashion products is never acceptable, and we never use exotic leathers.

Furthermore, we will be following the ZDHC Manufacturing Restricted Substances List (MRSL), a list of chemical substances banned from intentional use in facilities processing textile materials, including leather, which our manufacturing partner has signed off on. This means that we will not make use of any of the restricted hazardous chemicals listed by the ZDHC.

LEATHER WORKING GROUP

Wandler is a member of the Leather Working Group (LWG), and all our leather is LWG certified. LWG is a not-for-profit organisation working with continuously evolving audit standards covering environmental and social criteria to measure and certify leather suppliers.

They wish to drive best practices within the leather industry, namely reducing emissions, increasing transparency and due diligence in the supply chain, and improving resource efficiency and working conditions. LWG also presents its members with the opportunity to participate actively, empowering us to use our insight and experiences to contribute to LWG’s goals.

All our leather is LWG certified

PACKAGING

Protecting a leather bag until it reaches its destination requires appropriate packaging. For boxes and hangtags, Wandler uses FSC-certified materials. The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) works for the protection of biodiversity, the preservation of the rights of indigenous people, as well as for forest conservation and restoration. The paper we use to fill our bags and the paper used for our luxury boxes is recycled. The dustbags in which we place the leather bags are made of organic cotton. To protect our luxury boxes we use polybags made from renewable resources such as plant waste and algae. Finally, the paper used inside our luxury boxes contains post-consumer waste, for instance from kiwis.

MINIMUM WASTE

We work with the ‘Order on Demand’ principle – we only place orders with our manufacturers when a product has been ordered by a customer. Consequently, we avoid overproduction and overstocking. The high quality of the leather that we work hard on creating and maintaining does not fade as the leather becomes leftover in the production.

When we have batches of leftover leather, the volume changing from season to season, we aim to reuse as much of it as we can in upcoming seasons or special make-ups. It goes into the production of small leather goods and small components used in our pieces. In case the leftover leather has scratches and cannot be made into products, it finds its use as first prototypes, which we make in-house, thus also avoiding oversampling.

WORKPLACE

People are the heart of our operations; only with a committed and competent team are we able to remain on the course of becoming the progressive and creative business we want to be. To ensure that we only work with partners that share our values regarding high quality, fair working conditions, proper pay, and protection of workers’ rights, we require that our suppliers sign our Code of Conduct.

With our base in Amsterdam, where there are more bikes than residents, the majority of our team bikes to the office. We urge all employees to use public transportation as much as possible when needing to travel and the bike does not suffice.