Since 2017, we have been a Brand To Trust and we’re delighted that once again, we have been awarded the Butterfly Mark through recertification with Positive Luxury. This symbol has become a seal of approval synonymous with luxury brands that meet the highest standards of best practice in sustainability.
To proudly display the Butterfly Mark, companies must achieve a minimum of 50% in each area of assessment: Environment, Social, and Governance (ESG+).
So what does that mean in practice?
Part of a circular economy
Overall, our greatest improvement was in Environment which saw a 342% uptick. Key to this was understanding our waste management better. We keep waste records at our Notting Hill store, but we also looked all along the value chain, and where there was considerable waste generation, we worked with our supply partners to minimise that. Approaches to reducing, reusing, recycling, and recovering (the 4 Rs) were and are applied wherever possible.
Better together ~ It’s the people that make a company
The culture of our company and our team’s wellbeing are important to us, so we took extra steps in the area of Social to improve upon,
- Employee engagement
- Learning and development
- Health and wellbeing
- People’s rights and responsibilities
- Diversity, equality and inclusion (DE&I)
ARgENTUM is a female-fronted business, with our founder and CEO, Joy taking a grounded and balanced approach on what it means to be a leader today. As is our brand ethos ~ there’s beauty in balance.
A brand is only as sustainable as their supply chain
In regards to Governance, we applied the same approach to ethics as to waste disposal across our supply chain. To make sure our ingredients and packaging materials are held to the same high standards throughout the chain, 100% of our suppliers and subcontractors are signatories to our ethical agreement. This covers fair and free labour, child labour, living wages, discrimination, working hours, and working conditions. The agreement also stipulates regular audits and compliance reviews to ensure standards don’t slip.
A symbol of trust and transformation
Positive Luxury was co-founded by Diana Verde Nieto after a chance meeting with Sir David Attenborough. Diana was inspired by the story he told of the Large Blue Butterfly, a species which died out in Britain in 1979, but was successfully reintroduced in the early 1980s by a dedicated scientist. Established in 2011 with co-founder and serial entrepreneur Karen Hanton, the Butterfly Mark certification has become a globally-respected symbol of trust.
The butterfly is a powerful symbol of change and of the psyche itself. It is our MAGICIAN archetype, which evokes transformation. Our Positive Luxury recertification is not the end goal for us, it’s a pledge to continual improvement and commitment to transformation for a better world.
