Sustainability: here is what we do

What does it mean for a craft business to be sustainable?

To answer that, let us take a recent business model widely considered one of the least sustainable in environmental, social and economic terms.

Fast fashion.

This model involves:

- in most cases, moving production to low-cost locations where workers’ rights are barely a mirage;

- making low-quality garments that therefore do not last;

- a high environmental impact, due both to the short life of the garments and to the pollution of some companies’ manufacturing processes.

Let us tell you something...

Craftsmanship is something else entirely. 🦁

Being an artisan means creating unique objects with your own hands, with a quality that only craftsmanship can guarantee.

There are many workshops like ours that work with natural raw materials, and others that take on the noble mission of creating new things from recycled materials.

At Coryum we are all of this, and more.

What you are about to read is not a simple list, but an ongoing commitment to making our processes ever more sustainable.

Local, handmade production

We are not a large industry and we import no semi-finished goods from abroad.

All our pieces are made by hand by the artisan Massimiliano in the workshop in the historic center of Cerveteri, in the province of Rome.

100% local Italian craftsmanship.

Vegetable-tanned leather

The pieces sold in our shop are all made in genuine leather tanned in Tuscany.

So what? What is sustainable about that?

What we are about to tell you is very important, so listen...

Leather is a by-product of the food industry.

The hides of animals raised for milk or meat are recovered by tanneries that, through tanning, turn them into a unique material.

Without the work of tanneries, these hides would end up in landfill, as shown in some videos.

A genuine circular economy.

What you need to know, though, is that not all leather is processed sustainably.

That is why we chose the harder, longer road. But certainly the most virtuous one.

We could have chosen leather tanned with metals such as chromium, especially because:

- it is cheaper;

- it offers a wider range of colors;

- processing times are short.

Instead we chose the path of old Italian traditions and handwork that takes time and craft skill.

The path of vegetable-tanned leather.

This technique dates back to prehistoric times and happens slowly, soaking the hides for dozens of days in drums with natural substances such as the tannins found in tree wood.

The leather is then left to dry in the open air and dyed with natural colorants.

Unfortunately, given the costs and the long times, only about 20% of leather is processed with vegetable tanning.

Why choose a handmade piece in vegetable-tanned leather?

Here are the four most important reasons:

- the absence of trivalent chromium and other chemicals means no dermatitis, redness or allergic reactions;

- vegetable-tanned leather is breathable, so a shoe made with this material will not make the foot sweat or cause bad odors;

- it has a low environmental impact, and even the wastewater is fully reusable for fertilizer and compost;

- vegetable-tanned leather keeps the natural look of its grain, and over time it grows more beautiful, carrying a story rich with the experiences you live together.

Natural and certified organic raw materials

Beyond vegetable-tanned leather, we use certified organic cotton printed by the Italian supplier Miroglio Textile for our inner linings.

Packaging

For product boxes we use cardboard from the maker Self Packaging, which uses raw materials from FSC-controlled forests.

For packing, the tape is made of eco-friendly paper and the boxes are made with 70% recycled material, as stated by the supplier RajaPack.

You can find more details on the RajaPack website.

Eco-friendly production

As well as making our pieces by hand, we also use water-based eco-friendly glues, for a process that is safer for us and less polluting than traditional glues.

Collaborations with small artisans and creatives

Creativity is a cross-pollination of ideas.

We work with small artisans such as our painter Luana and the artist Giorgia, who hand-paint and tattoo our pieces on request, making them even more unique.

Shopify’s reforestation project

Shipping a product to a destination thousands of kilometers away involves carbon emissions.

What does that mean?

Over the past year, merchants signed up to Shopify shipped about 1.1 billion parcels.

By a conservative estimate, that adds up to 1 trillion kilometers.

Yes, you read that right. 1 TRILLION!

That is 25 million trips around the Earth, or 100 times the distance between the Sun and Neptune. Imagine how many couriers, ships and planes were involved.

What can we do?

There are two options: reduce emissions, and offset the rest.

But what does offsetting the rest mean?

Carbon emissions that cannot be reduced can be offset. On one side we have a negative impact from shipping, and on the other we need to offset and neutralize it.

How? For example, through reforestation.

It is with this noble aim that we joined the program run by the start-up Pachama.

For every piece we ship, based on the length of the journey and the weight of the parcel, a percentage of the revenue goes to funding the reforestation of areas of the Amazon rainforest.

There are many reasons for this choice, but one in particular: forests capture around 30% of annual carbon emissions.

Using tools such as drones, satellites and artificial intelligence, the Pachama team can measure the density of biomass in given areas and find out which ones need action.

For more details and to follow the project we joined, you can visit the dedicated page by clicking here.