Fri 29 Sep 2023 | by Rob Hutchins

BLE 2023 | Pure Table Top's mission for 'regenerative change in homewares'

Pure Table Top’s mission to bring purpose and circularity to the homewares sector while measuring and reducing its carbon footprint has reached such a point the team has recently adopted means to measure the impact of each and every product in the portfolio. A certified B Corporation that has launched licensing partnerships with Kew Gardens and Eden Project, Pure is no stranger to being the first to tread new paths in industry sustainability. Now, working with Dayrize Scoring, the team has begun work on measuring its product impact process in its entirety. On top of that, the team works with its partners to introduce recycled content into its ranges ‘wherever possible’, will always opt for ‘sustainable material alternatives like natural fibres’ whenever it can, and has ‘proudly eliminated nearly all plastic from its operations.’ Yet, talking to Lucie Taff, head of brands and marketing at Pure Table Top, you quickly realise this is all still just scratching the surface of what the business has planned for the future sustainable development of the homewares industry. Before Pure Table Top showcase all their latest on the Products of Change stand (D120) at Brand Licensing Europe next week, we catch up with Lucie to learn a whole lot more. Hi Lucie - it's great to catch up! Let's dive right in and find out about Pure Table Top's approach to sustainability. Here at Pure Table Top, we're proud to be a Certified B Corporation, meaning we truly care about the way we do business and our approach to production and sourcing. We have been consistently evaluating our product impacts across multiple stages of its lifecycle, with 80% of a product’s overall environmental impact being determined during its design phase. Our products are in millions of homes, which is why we want to use them as a platform to advocate for positive change, starting with the materials we use to create them. As part of our wider sustainability strategy, we have introduced a set of Responsible Sourcing Pillars, with the first being ‘Respect the Environment’. This pillar ensures we always use materials that have the smallest negative impact on local environments, as well as ensuring we provide practical guidance to suppliers on how to sustainably reduce Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions, wastage, and hazardous chemical usage. In 2022 we introduced our first ranges of Recycled Ceramics, with 30% of the mug’s material being made up of Recycled Fine China – a big step for Pure towards bettering our sustainable material usage! And we know that a major part of this approach is the launch of Purer Home. Can you tell us about the launch and some of the incredibly exciting projects you’re working on under this banner? We created the PurerHome brand with the mission ‘to be the catalyst for regenerative change across the homeware industry’. The effects of our consumption on the planet are evident, and with this in mind we accepted that the challenge was ours to tackle. We wanted to engage with consumers to understand their thoughts and challenges and use this research to inform our product and communications development. With our unique supplier relationships, we have worked collaboratively together to find new and better ways of utilising resources to create more sustainable products for consumer's homes in the form of PurerHome’s debut collections. Our Purer Home brand is due to launch June 2024 but we also have an extremely exciting collaboration up our sleeve… We are proud to announce our first collaborative collection will be launching with The Eden Project. The Eden Project's mission to create a movement that builds relationships between people and the natural world, to demonstrate the power of working together for the benefit of all living things. Purer Home is committed to working with The Eden Project in a bid to raise awareness and give back to the reforestation and restoration of the vulnerable areas we take inspiration from. A percentage of every sale of a Purer Home X Eden product will go back into the Eden charity and its mission to make change. We'd love to learn more about the licensing partnerships you have within the portfolio at the moment? The Kew Gardens partnerships is particularly inspiring, would love to learn more! Here at Pure we work closely with the team at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew as part of our licensing partnership to select beautiful illustrations from their botanic art library and archive. Both the Living Jewels range, and our previous range ‘Bloom’ for AW21, showcase the stunning beauty of botanist drawings with some dating back over 300 years. They have been reimaged and reproduced to create distinctive, stunning collections. Sourced closer to home, from Portugal, and decorated with an innovative reactive glaze inspired by these historical illustrations, each unique piece of beautiful stoneware dinnerware in the Living Jewels collection is durable, long-lasting and carries a meaningful sustainable message. Our suppliers in Portugal carefully select only the highest-quality, most natural, eco-friendliest stoneware which is single fired in the kiln to reduce both energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. The quality ensures consumers can buy better to last longer, whilst meanwhile a percentage of every sale from our Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew ranges goes directly back to the Gardens themselves, therefore supporting their ongoing work to preserve life on earth and fight against biodiversity loss. And what about some of the latest product launches from Pure Table Top? How do these embody the whole PTT ethos? New for SS23, we are proud to have launched our first range with Sur La Table as part of our licensing partnership. American cookware brand Sur La Table was founded in 1972 by Shirley Collins, a woman with a passion for cooking and a love for French cuisine, whose aim was to bring people together to share a table. Here at Pure, we are all about bringing joy to the table, which is why the Sur La Table ethos matched with Pure Table Top’s perfectly. The result was our debut collection, Colour Me Happy. Marrying beautifully bold yet sophisticated hues of blue, green, orange, and yellow, the range includes bright glassware, stoneware ceramics and grounding tones of bamboo alongside crisp white napkins with a colourful trim. The whole range makes for a stunning and vibrant table scaping opportunity which truly feels joyous without compromising on its sustainable credentials. The stoneware ceramics are strong and durable, allowing consumers to buy better to last longer, whilst the woven kitchen textiles are 100% Cotton. We are proud members of BCI Cotton, who are on a mission to help cotton communities survive and thrive, while protecting and restoring the environment. We also know you're now working with Dayrize on some product scoring projects, which is awesome! How did the partnership come about and what does this all entail? Assessing the sustainable credentials of each of our products has always been one of our biggest sustainable goals which is why we partnered with DayRize, a company whose technology accurately measures the environmental impact of our individual pieces. We send DayRize data from our designers, suppliers and logistics providers on the materials, packaging and processes used to create and deliver our products. Their technology then compares this data to the market and industry standards and gives a holistic total score from 1 to 100, as well as scoring against five sustainability subcategories. The higher the score, the more sustainable the product is deemed to be by the environmental experts. How is this helping you on your journey of sustainable development and communicating that all with your customers? We value Dayrize’s mission to drive transparency across the consumer goods sector and to unlock what is too often an area of business fraught with confusion. These scores help us to make more informed design, sourcing and manufacturing decisions, whilst allowing us to keep the end shopper informed. You have some amazing community give-back projects on the go, too – can you tell us more about these? Why are these important to the business/brand? As a B-Corp certified business, Community is one of the 5 key impact areas that drive how we do business. Supporting charities and groups within our local community is very important to everyone at Pure Table Top. Our Charity Committee was set up to manage and guide our charitable activities and consists of eight colleagues from across the business. Every year our team selects two charities to support through our various fundraising events and projects. For 2023/24, our chosen charities are Pancreatic Cancer UK and Lupus UK – both of which are very close to our team’s hearts. Here at Pure we also offer two paid volunteering days a year to all employees. These can be used to support any charity of our team’s choice and in the past have included projects such as refurbishing and transforming one of the Community Hub Rooms at Action Homeless Leicester, a local charity that helps people out of the cycle of homeless and offers support and advice for the future. Finally, with a surplus of samples coming in and out of our doors, we also recently donated over 30 boxes of unused items of glassware, dinnerware and textiles to a charity called Open Hands. Open Hands are a charity that support those who are vulnerable and struggling to make ends meet by giving them access to emergency provisions items such as food, clothing and household items with dignity. Thank you Lucie for taking the time to chat with us, we can't wait to showcase the Pure Table Top portfolio at Brand Licensing Europe next week on stand D120.