Sustainability

Our mission

Eleek is working to create a better world by combining visionary ideals with practical actions; We are committed to understanding and reducing Eleek’s impact on the natural environment, and to creating a workplace that fosters community, creativity and personal growth. Toward that end, we will continually seek out cleaner and greener materials, processes, and paradigms. We will incorporate changes as quickly and thoroughly as we can feasibly do so, with the ultimate goal of a positive environmental and social impact. We will work with our employees, our customers, our vendors and our peers to raise the consciousness and standards of our industry and our community.

Our Organization

• Eleek Inc. is a Certified B Corporation. When you support a B Corporation, you’re supporting a better way to do business. Certified B Corporations meet rigorous, independent standards of social and environmental performance. They are creating greater economic opportunity, strengthening local communities, and preserving the environment.
• As a member of The Natural Step Network Eleek is working to understand and improve its environmental footprint.
• Eleek purchases carbon offsets for 100% of the electricity it uses in its shop. Solar panels generate all of the electricity used by its office.
• Eleek is an EPA Green Power Partner—One of a limited list of US companies operating on 100% renewable energy.
• Eleek’s website host Canvas Dreams runs on 100% renewable energy.
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  Eleek utilizes a sustainable purchasing policy which favors products and services that have the highest-possible post-consumer recycled content, minimize or reduce greenhouse gas emissions, have the lowest toxicity (zero VOC whenever possible), reduce waste by way of being durable & reusable, and are made and sold within 50 miles of our shop.

• In 2013, 80% of our supplies came from within 50 miles of our shop. Buying locally allows us to support the regional economy and reduces the environmental impact of transporting our supplies from far away.
• Eleek prints on environmentally preferable paper (high post-consumer content) using the most environmentally preferable printing methods. We use 100% recycled stock with at least 30% post-consumer content for all in-house printing using our non-toxic, low waste Xerox solid ink laser printer. Eleek’s catalog is now only available in a digital format in order to conserve resources.
• Eleek offers living wages and excellent health and dental insurance to all its employees.
• Eleek’s delivery truck runs on a biodiesel blend (usually 99%), and we work to minimize the number of miles it is driven by carefully consolidating trips.
• Eleek has an incentive program to encourage employees to commute by bicycle or public transportation.
• Eleek strives to minimize garbage output and divert waste from the landfill. Our ambitious recycling program includes recycling all paper, metal, glass, wood and plastics.
• Our shipping department reuses shipping containers and packaging.

Our Products

• Eleek products are durable and timelessly beautiful, designed for non-obsolescence from the start.
• Eleek castings are made of recycled metals with the highest possible post-consumer content (the only exception is our pewter which is guaranteed to be lead-free and therefore cannot contain post-consumer recycled content). Our cast aluminum, is 100% recycled with a post-consumer content between 85 – 100%, depending on the product line. Pewter, bronze, cast iron, stainless steel and aluminum remnants are utilized in casting. We recycle all other scrap metal.
• Eleek offers state-of-the-art energy-saving lamps and electronics such as LEDs and compact fluorescents in all of the light fixtures that it designs and manufactures.
• Eleek uses local scrap material and encourages other companies to do the same. For instance, Eleek’s Masa cabinet hardware line is made of 100% post-consumer scrap sourced from Portland’s ReBuilding Center, a building materials reuse center located less than a mile from Eleek’s shop. For more information about the benefits of manufacturing with local scrap, see our sister site ProjectScrap.org.
• Eleek will take back any product it makes in order to dismantle, reuse and/or recycle its materials.

Our Processes

• Our silicone molds work for several thousand pours (more uses than are ever likely to be required) and when those pours are finished, the silicone is recycled as filler in new molds.
• Eleek’s wood patterns are made from a combination of discarded lumber, salvaged wood and new wood, depending on availability (at least 70% discarded and/or salvaged).
• Metal products are finished using reusable abrasive media and re-circulated water. The resulting by-product, a ceramic slurry, is donated to artists or for use in construction.
• Shipping pallets are reused. We have an incentive program to ensure that shipping crates get returned to us for reuse.