Folks who are reading this from Vancouver and Vancouver Island are aware that there are a lot of beeswax wraps on the market. As a growing business, Nature Bee sees this as a terrific thing. With more companies bringing beeswax wraps to market, people's awareness of the benefits that beeswax wraps have to offer increases. As this industry grows, so does the Nature Bee community and most importantly, less plastic wrap makes it into our oceans and landfills.
It's not just beeswax wraps. The market for high-quality sustainable alternatives to single-use goods has grown exponentially in the past few years. It is a part of our mission to be involved in this developing network of sustainable goods. The rise of brands like Kleen Kanteen, Pela Case, Unwrapped Life, and more is a representative of the sustainable market that we aim to add value too.
The turn to sustainability is not only seen in providers of goods. Organizations across all industries are finding ways to adopt sustainable practices in their operations. This is helping cut down on the cost of waste and increase the value of their organizations - all while making a smaller impact on our planet.
Back to Beeswax Wraps - what's our difference?
One thing is very clear to us, not all beeswax wraps are created equally. In this industry, beeswax wraps are offered with a range of ingredients, employee working conditions, and quality. We often hear from our customers that they don't know much about what goes on behind the scenes of Nature Bee and other beeswax wraps companies. Let's talk about it!
First, If you are unfamiliar with our story or are new to our community and want to learn more, check out our about page and read some of our other blogs.
A key principle for Katie, as she created Nature Bee, was to ensure that each wrap that enters our customer’s hands is made with social equity and environmental responsibility in mind. We love that our wraps have a solid layer of wax (not too much so it falls off in chunks), a smooth finish, the right amount of stickiness, a beautiful pattern to bring it all together, and that they are made in Canada. We are not perfect but we try our best! The sustainability journey can be challenging if we don't applaud the small things we do. Instead of focusing on everything that we need to do to be 100% sustainable we get excited over each small change our business makes to be better.
Our Hive
We have a small core team of busy worker bees and want them to be as happy as can bee. We take how we treat our team seriously. To support their growth and happiness with Nature Bee we pay all of our workers a living wage, in all positions, and provide weekly staff meals. In addition to this, we are also often carpooling to work to reduce our carbon emissions in commuting. It is important to see that the people behind a product you consume are being set up for success. Otherwise, a so-called sustainable product is being made off the backs of undervalued and unsupported workers - that doesn’t sit well with us!
The Bees and The Trees
A beeswax wrap is only as good as the products that go into them. We love telling people about our beeswax partners at Country Bee Honey Farm. Country Bee has been a part of our story from the beginning and is a great example of a Vancouver Island business acting sustainably in their cultivation of beeswax and more. We recently wrote an Instagram post dedicated to them - check it out here.
Our pine tree resin is a bit of a secret of ours as it makes a big difference to the feel and durability of our wraps. We are happy to share that we source our pine tree resin from a small family-run Canadian business that sources their pine tree resin sustainably. We are happy to support local small business owners who are going out of their way to do the right thing.
What brings it all together - The Cotton
The cotton that we currently source for our consumer wraps is 100% organic and GOTS Certified. This is something we are pretty proud of as GOTS is the world's leading processing standard for organic textiles which vets production on rigorous social and environmental inputs and outputs.
The cotton sourced for our custom wraps is also a leader in sustainability. This partner pays tremendous attention to the water and fabric waste that can often be associated with textile production. In addition, they support small cotton providers and utilizes environmentally friendly ingredients.
That's a Wrap
Thanks for reading about what goes into our wraps and how we are challenging ourselves to conduct business with social and environmental sustainability in mind. As always, if you have any questions about what you have read or about our products, shoot us an email.
Check out our new product care and safety page here