Featured Retailer: The Green Giving Company

June 3, 2009 by Brenda
Filed under Featured Posts, Featured Retailers, Lifestyle

Who are you and your position?

I’m Hugo Middleton and I run The Green Giving Co.

The reason for starting the company?

The business was started in order to provide consumers with a green, reusable alternative to wrapping paper and greeting cards, both of which create a huge amount of waste every year.

How long have you been in business?

After filling another black plastic bag with wrapping paper last Christmas I thought that there had to be a greener way of giving gifts so I started researching alternatives and the business started trading a month later in January 2009.

Tell us about your products

Whilst searching for alternatives for wrapping paper I came across a solution that the Japanese had been using for centuries: furoshiki, which is a piece of cloth that they used for carrying clothes, storing items, decoration and also for wrapping presents. From here I got hold of some fabric and started to play with it, tying it in different ways and found how easy and straight forward it is to wrap something up. Our Kerchiefs are available in many different fabrics and patterns, all of which are handmade in the UK by a women’s education and enterprise project in East London. More recently we started to make reusable greeting cards too, which are covered in fabric to give them a unique feel, and on the inside is a piece of replaceable note paper where you can write your message, which allows the card to be used again.

What is your favourite green luxury item?

I’ve got a little 1970’s foldable shopper bike which I race around town on, it’s rusting and the gears don’t work properly but I love it. I’m not sure that it is a luxury item, but it means I can avoid the tube which is an enormous bonus!

What is your top green tip?

Get a sewing machine! Altering and customizing old clothes is a fantastic way to give them a new life. And there is so much more you can do; curtains, table cloths, bags, cushions etc etc…

What do you do to relax?

Sadly I rather enjoy triathlons and marathons! At the moment I’m doing a lot of swimming in the fantastic lido at London Fields in Hackney.

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