What does sustainability mean to us?
At Sebra, we are committed to creating designs for children that bring instant joy and spark curiosity, but without leaving an unethical footprint on our planet.
Despite our efforts, we recognise that we still leave a footprint when we design new Sebra collections. That's why we are working purposefully to reduce our footprint, and our goal is to keep it as close to zero as possible.
Factoring in sustainability from the outset
The environmental approach to design is deeply embedded in our daily lives. Our skilled designers are meticulous when selecting the materials that make up our products. They take into account things like the materials’ environmental impact, their lifetime and how to make the best use of them.
We take pride in minimising waste when designing Sebra products. This means that we are fully aware of all the standard dimensions of the fabric, wood, etc. supplied to us, and incorporate this knowledge in the design process in a way that makes optimum use of the resources.
A good example here is our musical mobile with mirror. The design has been thought out so that the wooden part is made from residual material from other Sebra mobiles. This reduces resource consumption, making our environmental footprint smaller than if we had used new wood.
Good workmanship and quality
Sebra products are excellently made from quality materials. This means that our products can be used for many years and by several generations, or resold when you don't need them anymore. We have always adopted this approach to
sustainability – we simply want as many people as possible to enjoy a Sebra product before it ends up as waste.
To extend the lifetime of our products, we offer spare parts for our iconic Sebra Bed and other selected products. This is an area in which we want to improve, and we have several exciting initiatives in the pipeline.
We choose our suppliers carefully, and it’s important to us to build long-term relationships with each of them, where trust is the cornerstone of the co-operation. That's why we visit our suppliers and get to know them to make sure we share the same values. Our suppliers should, as far as possible, be certified so that we can push our environmental efforts in the right direction.
Transport and packaging
Our products are manufactured in multiple countries around the world. We want the shipping to Denmark to be as climate-friendly as possible, so we choose sea freight over air freight, even if it means that our products take longer to reach their destination.
Unfortunately, we cannot avoid plastic packaging during shipping because we want the products to arrive safely and not be damaged by e.g. water during the journey. Instead, we encourage our suppliers to use as little plastic as possible, and we’re constantly working with them to find better solutions.
We try to reuse the shipping boxes we receive when we need to send goods ourselves. Any cardboard boxes that are too damaged to use for shipping, we shred and use as filling for the boxes we send to our own customers.
Smart packaging design
Our clever packaging designer has ensured that when you buy a Sebra product, the packaging contains as little plastic and glue as possible – without compromising on product protection. In fact, the toy packaging can often be used for play.
Our goal is for all the cardboard we use to be FSC-certified.
Waste management
Unfortunately, the world isn’t perfect and we contribute waste like everyone else. We try to recycle as many resources as possible. Any waste we can’t find takers for is sorted so that it can be circularised as far as possible.
The ability to waste sort our own products easily is also a key area of our design process. It should be possible to separate out the different parts of a product for
recycling. Nevertheless, as safety is our top priority, 100% waste sorting is not always entirely possible.