About Our Ethical Edit
Our Ethical Edit is a collection of all our favourite brands who are working hard to improve their business practices by reducing their impact on the environment, improving the livelihoods of all employees in their supply chain or giving back to the community around them.
Photo by Sarah Pollok from our Flo Gives Back trip to Nepal in 2018.
The amazing brands that are included in our Ethical Edit fit into one or more of the following categories: Ethical + Fair, Eco Friendly, Supporting Communities, and Support Local..
The entire motivation behind our Ethical Edit is to encourage our brands to be more transparent about the behind the scenes of how their products are made and to motivate them to improve their practices in all 5 areas of our Ethical Edit. We see this as a tool to provoke us all to thoughtfully and mindfully consider who made our products, and how they were made in order to uphold the integrity of mother nature and our community. We invite our staff, brands and customers to learn and grow in this area to stimulate positive, effective change for both our planet and our population, globally.
Our aim is to empower you to use your dollar as a vote as to what you want the future to look like.
Here are the 4 categories of our Ethical Edit and what it means for a brand to be considered worthy of being included in each:
Support Local
As a New Zealand, family-run business, we love supporting other local businesses. This collection includes all our New Zealand brands that are humbly working away, doing what they love, designing and/or making their products in our gorgeous country for us to enjoy! Shop our Support Local collection here.
Ethical + Fair
These products are made ethically and fairly in accordance with strict codes of conduct and certifications* to ensure that all employees maintain their rights, are provided with a healthy and safe work environment, have decent working hours, are not subject to discrimination, bonded labour or child labour, and all employees are provided fair remuneration for their work. *If you would like to find out more about the exact wording each brand has used in their codes of conduct and certifications please feel free to contact us and we’d be happy to let you know, or go to the brand directly. Shop our Ethical + Fair collection here.
Photo by Sarah Pollok from our Flo Gives Back trip to Nepal in 2018.
Eco-Friendly
We are proud to promote these brands as they are working hard to reduce their environmental impact by adopting one or more of the following practices: (1) using sustainable or natural materials, (2) adopting eco-friendly production techniques (i.e. they use methods of production that have a lower environmental impact than traditional production practices), (3) they use eco-friendly packaging solutions and (4) the products they produce replace single-use items that help to reduce waste. Click through on each product to find out what each brand is doing to reduce their impact. Shop our Eco-Friendly collection here.
Photo by Sarah Pollok from our Flo Gives Back trip to Nepal in 2018.
Supporting Communities
This collection of products is made up of truly incredible brands that go above and beyond by making it their priority to support local communities and/or the Planet. These brands give back using one of the following practices: (1) donating a portion of their profits to a cause, (2) using a buy one, give one scheme, (3) volunteering their time, or (4) empowering and training local artisans to improve their livelihoods. You can shop away to your heart's content knowing that your purchase has a positive impact on someone or somewhere on this Earth. Click through on each product to find out what these brands are doing to give back. Shop our Supporting Communities collection here.
Photo by Sarah Pollok from our Flo Gives Back trip to Nepal in 2018.
Why do we stock products that don't qualify under one or more of the categories?
Just because a brand doesn’t feature in this edit doesn’t necessarily mean it doesn’t care about ethics. Many brands are working hard every day to improve in these areas, but as this takes a lot of time and resources to report on, not all of our brands have enough information to meet the standard to fit under any of the values included. We believe in encouraging and motivating brands to work hard to meet these standards, whilst also understanding that good things take time, and that the majority of brands learning to improve their corporate social responsibility want to do so in a careful, thorough way - rather than rush into making changes to be more ‘ethical’ and ‘sustainable’ without being truly in depth about it, for a lasting positive impact on the industry.
We’re only human and can be the first to admit that we are far from perfect, so please understand that whilst doing as much as we can to avoid mistakes, this is inevitable. If you notice something that seems a bit off in our Ethical Edit, we’d love for you to let us know, so please feel free to contact socialmedia@floandfrankie.com.
Where have we sourced the information?
Information provided by the brand’s website and direct communication** with the brand sales representatives was used to formulate an extensive ‘Flo & Frankie Brand Guide’, where we searched to find every brands stance on the 5 core values above. Relying on decency and honesty of these two sources, we were able to decipher those that we felt aligned with one or more of the 5 areas. **If we were provided false claims by either of these sources, it would be a breach in misleading advertising.
If you’d like to read more about our ethical and sustainability stance and practices at our end, please see our People | Planet | Prosperity page here.
Photo by Sarah Pollok from our Flo Gives Back trip to Nepal in 2018.