Written by Nancy de Fays and Quentin Malgaud

Today’s Earth Day, and it’s a special day. Exactly one year ago, LINEDOCK became officially Climate Neutral Certified. We're one of the 230 companies that measured their 2020 and 2021 carbon footprint, offset it entirely by investing in climate change solutions, and implemented plans to reduce our future emissions. As sustainability is a topic dear to our hearts, we took the time to interview a few fellow tech companies making an impact.

Here are some key takeaways.

Sustainability starts early. One of the key takeaways that stood out from our interviews is that sustainability is already happening at the inception stage. In our interview with Lawrence Lander, Peak Design's Creative Director, we talked about the fundamentals of timelessness design.

According to Lawrence, what truly sets sustainable companies apart is their ability to build products meant to last long (we're talking 10-15 years) and when the whole organisation embraces sustainability: from material sourcing, to designing for serviceability, all the way down to afterlife. Building a product that lasts requires a lot of design thinking very early in the process, way before CMF (Color, Material and Fabric) process.

We were also blown away by the insatiable curiosity towards materials. It almost seems like a prerequisite for any consumer product founder. This obsession naturally breaks down into better materials for the environment. Whether it is at the core of the business, or by meticulous materials evaluation in their product lines, companies pay an increasingly high attention to the raw material used in their product parts. This involves sourcing from new innovative suppliers, further nurturing an entire ecosystem of eco-responsible suppliers.

At NOMAD, the team is actively working on an alternative to leather for all their leather-based products.

At Pela, Founder Jeremy Lang developed a compostable plastic compound made out of flax and commercialises it in their iPhone cases and watch straps. "Traditional plastics were engineered to last a long time and be strong. Bio-polymers or bio-plastics can be made from renewable materials and have different chemistry so they can biodegrade in a compost environment and go back into the earth in months instead of hundreds of years." says Jeremy.

At Peak Design, the team developed their own nylon polyester blend using 100% post consumer recycled polyester and 100% post industrial recycled nylon, in collaboration with Repreve. 3 million water bottles of recycled plastic have been used so far.

Since the early 80's, North American and European companies have been mainly focusing on building brands and services, while production and manufacturing activities were transferred to Asia. Today, the great majority of goods we use in our daily life is still made there. While cheaper labor used to be the #1 reason to relocate manufacturing overseas a few years ago, the story is different today. Asia, with China leading the way, has become the factory of the world and the industrial network there is concentrated, qualitative, and extremely skilled. Labour costs are no longer as competitive as they used to be, but the savoir-faire and the industrial fabric are real. Thus, every brand we've met and talked to had some degree of production happening in Asia. We are no exception.