Spotlight on suppliers - Everything Environmental

Sustainable merchandise
Spotlight on suppliers - Everything Environmental

Everything Environmental is the UK’s leading trade supplier of purely eco-friendly and ethically sourced promotional gifts. We interview the founder, Evan Lewis, about why he started the company and where he sees the industry heading.

What lead you to start Everything Environmental?

I started the company in 2005, when I was working with a specialist environmental manufacturer in the promotional merchandise sector – a company which I had helped to set up. The owner was an engineer and an inventor, and his philosophy was to only sell products the company manufactured.

I was a Sales Director, and I could see a huge gap in the market for a larger range of green products. In the early noughties there was a real appetite amongst marketeers across the country for environmental products. People were continually asking for eco-friendly bags, eco-friendly t-shirts, and a whole range of other things.

The industry was just waiting for someone to jump in and fill this gap, and so I set up a wholesale business specialising in environmental and ethical products. From 2005 to 2008 these products were very popular and the business gained a lot of traction.

So, how did things change in 2008?

The 2008 economic crisis put paid to promotional merchandise to a large degree, and environmental merchandise in particular. The perception was that environmentally-friendly merchandise was more expensive, although this is not necessarily true. Once people came back to promotional merchandise, they felt they couldn’t afford to choose the environmentally-friendly options.

When you launched, what were your first products?

The first few products we launched were classics within the promotional merchandise sector – pens, pencils, lanyards, notebooks. We produced eco versions of these classics. It was a difficult argument to ask people to convert to eco products, so giving them what they wanted made it much easier. We had to deliver on what they were already buying, but giving them a greener and more ethical product.

Is it obvious to the end customer receiving the products that they are environmentally friendly?

It’s not necessarily visible at all. In the 1980s and 1990s environmentally friendly products were all beige, camouflage, black, and generally quite unattractive. For us to persuade corporates, we had to do everything in primary colours, and corporate colours. Google, however ethical and environmentally-friendly it wants to be, still wants everything in their five primary colours.

Do brands usually want to highlight the origin of the product?

We always give the option, on any design, of a strapline that explains what that product is made from. So Deutsche Bank might have their logo and web address, and they can then say, ‘This pencil is made from recycled CD cases.’ We can also state that the product is Fairtrade, organic, recycled – as a strapline next to a logo or campaign message. Some companies take us up on this, some don’t.

Promotional merchandise is a real opportunity for companies to get across a message about their responsible approach. It’s one of the only mediums through which a corporate can demonstrate their CSR commitment – as most of their advertising is for a product or service, and is not particular to the company itself.

What are your current bestsellers?

Our bestsellers are still the classics that everybody has always bought: Pens, bags, lanyards. There is a demand for other ancillary products, but the big sellers are still writing instruments and bags. We are simply trying to get companies to replace the plastic products that they are already buying with an ethical and sustainable alternative.

At the moment, we are going very much into drinkware, which is currently very popular. We listen to our customers, and we find or develop a product that can fill that gap for them. We have water bottles made from sugarcane and travel mugs made from bamboo.

How do you select products to include in your range, and are they unique to you?

We have minimum criteria that our products have to meet, and we won’t ever put something into our range if it doesn’t meet these criteria.

Sometimes we design the product and it is unique to us, and sometimes it’s more that we know how to brand products more effectively than other companies. For example, we have a much better printable area on bamboo mugs. We can print on a conical shape from top to bottom and all the way around, and not many others can do this.

Sugarcane water bottles are unique to us in the UK, as we have partnered with a European company. We sometimes team up with other environmental companies, and with our buying power combined we can get a sensible price and the right sort of production.

The plastic for these water bottles is made from sugarcane ethanol, and it can be recycled in the normal way. This is much more environmentally friendly as we are not taking oil from the ground to make oil-based plastics. Instead, we are using the by-product from a maize crop. We can create ethanol from the maize, and we can make a plastic which has a much lower environmental impact.

What does ‘sustainable’ mean to you?

We think there is a place to combine sustainability with recycling, and with ethical production. So, we are not tied to one particular ethos – instead, we strive for best practice.

One thing we do feel strongly about is that recyclable doesn’t automatically mean eco-friendly, and reusable doesn’t mean eco-friendly. My kettle is reusable, but I don’t consider it to be eco-friendly.

There are bags made from Polypropylene, an oil-based plastic. They can’t biodegrade, they can’t be recycled – but they are labelled eco-friendly because they are reusable. We can do better than that. I would want that bag to be made from a more sustainable material.

Where do you think the Promotional Merchandise industry is headed?

We have to do away with single use, non-useful, disposable gimmicks. In the old days people used to receive a plastic-tipped dart with a strapline saying the company was aiming for the top, which they would put straight in the bin. It’s incredibly wasteful and it’s still happening now, but it needs to stop.

I recently attended a dinner where we all received a goodie bag of items, and nine out of ten had no purpose or wouldn’t be used. There was a t-shirt printed with the supplier’s name, the page number of their catalogue and the number of colours available. It was purely in that bag to raise awareness of that company’s existence – it was never designed to be worn.

These kinds of practices won’t be tolerated any more, and the industry needs to change.

What is driving the need for this change, other than this being the right thing to do?

Marketeers now are so much more savvy. The millennials buying the merchandise are not going to stomach a wasteful proposition from a distributor, whatever it is. It will reflect incredibly badly on the company that’s giving it away. The marketeers will drive the change, and it’s already happening. The Blue Planet effect is really starting to show through.

At trade exhibitions at the start of year in Europe and the UK, everyone on the various stands reported back that sustainable products were all they were being asked for.

Evan Lewis

Managing Director 

Here at Bounce Creative Designs we wholeheartedly agree that wastefulness and throwaway gimmicks have no place in marketing in 2019 and beyond. Since the very start of of the business we have always focussed on high-quality items that will be valued, kept and used. Not only is this approach much better for the environment, but it reflects well on brands.

We are committed to sourcing the best range of environmentally-friendly products, and encouraging clients to use these wherever possible. We love design, innovation and technology particularly in the eco-friendly space, and we continually bring fresh thinking and new products to the table that are reusable, loved, and kept.