Sustainability Policy

Our Products

Sustainability is at the heart of everything we do here at Lovely Things, where we aim to get beautiful baby and kid’s clothes back into circulation. Everything we do is to extend the life of these clothes in a sustainable, environmentally friendly and transparent way.

We source our products from our own customers. We offer the best rates in Ireland for preloved children’s clothing and also have a Social Responsibility Programme in respect of donations. 

If products are returned to us, we only use eco-friendly cleaning products produced by Irish manufacturers or 100% organic, eco-friendly cleaners for example baking powder (great for stains!) or vinegar (great to remove odours!). 

Packaging

We have spent many months reviewing our packaging needs as we want to eliminate any unnecessary packaging and offer the best, most environmentally friendly options to our customers. We use cardboard packing boxes, corrugated paper padded envelopes, paper bags, gift wrap and tape which are 100% reusable, recyclable or compostable and most of these products are made from recycled products here in Ireland.

We have sourced all our packaging supplies from Irish producers and suppliers  and do not ‘brand’ our packaging except for a recyclable sticker which, after current stock is used up, will be compostable. We ask that our customers re-use this packaging in the first instance and then recycle if they can’t re-use and are producing supports (e.g. short videos and infographics) to help customers to do this.

Every week we check through any waste produced and make a note of any avoidable waste (this includes packaging used by our suppliers or customers sending clothing to us) or any single use items.   

Transport

We use An Post, the national carrier, to transport our goods (both supply and dispatch). We collate orders and can go on foot to our local post office, drive larger orders directly to our local An Post collection point or offer local delivery up to a 5km radius of our place of business. We keep a diary of trips taken by car and hope to offset our carbon emissions from these journeys at the end of the year and explore a better way to make ad hoc deliveries.

Social Responsibility

For each kilo of donated items received by Lovely Things which meet our Quality Standards, we will donate a minimum of €3 to be shared equally between our Programme Partners. For more information, please see our Social Responsibility Programme

Place of Business

We are delighted to be able to monitor the use of energy by Lovely Things at our place of business and also provide all our product information digitally instead of in print. We do ask our sellers to provide us with a completed ‘Seller Form’ which we print on uncoated FSC certified or recycled paper using water-soluble inks to send to our sellers.

As a clothing business we use a lot of rails and hangers but, with the exception of our fitted rails in our studio which had to be ordered to fit this space, we sourced all other rails and hangers second-hand from a variety of sources. Our view is that we are reusing resources that would otherwise go to landfill.

Annual Review

Part of our commitment here at Lovely Things is to review this policy annually and identify any aspects of our business which are unsustainable (such as using non-renewable energy, delivery methods etc.) and take measurable actions to tackle these issues.

Lovely Things sincerely want to partner with our customers and sustainability partners to offer the best and most sustainable business we can. We welcome your feedback and would be delighted to hear from you at contactus@lovelythings.ie