A company that makes physical products is always going to have an environmental impact. At Paulin, we aim to minimise this harm as much as possible without compromising beautiful, functional goods or accessible pricing. 

This means being socially responsible and ensuring we work with manufacturers that provide good working conditions, fair wages and development opportunities to their employees. We believe transparency around production is essential in establishing higher standards across the industry.

Another important step to reduce our environmental harm is making high-quality products that are built to last. To us, this means making intentional and considered choices about how and where we make each part of our products and choosing partners with solid industry reputations when outsourcing production. Equally central to this methodology is the provision of an in-house repair service.

We have already made steps towards reducing our negative impact:
We use high-quality, vegetable-tanned leathers for our straps and source from countries with strict manufacturing laws to avoid the use of harmful chemicals.
Our vegan strap alternative is incredibly hard-wearing stainless steel.
We avoid using plastic wherever possible, instead opting for natural and recyclable materials such as paper and cork for our packaging.
We use the lowest-impact shipping options where possible. For UK deliveries, we use Royal Mail, whose emissions are around half as high as their competitors.
We source most of our packaging from the UK, including boxes, paper and envelopes.
Our cork box inserts are made in Portugal from pulped off-cuts, using electricity powered by the cork itself. They are shipped to us by boat rather than air freight.
We keep our packaging as streamlined as possible to minimise the material and shipping used.
We have begun producing in smaller quantities to avoid waste, and manufacture in-house or locally where possible.
We offer a repair service to prolong the life of our products.
Our company culture encourages environmentally-conscious behaviour, and we pay salaries that allow our staff to make sustainable choices outside of work.

Our manufacturing has moved from the industry's traditional large-scale production to a leaner, more local model. This way, we can produce with less waste, which we feel is a vital consideration when looking to be more environmentally responsible. Certain elements (like cases and movements) are made by relatively few factories worldwide, and most have high minimum order quantities. Producing smaller amounts is almost always more costly, so a balancing act is needed to keep prices accessible for our customers.

We are working towards achieving the following goals by 2030:
Transition completely to a Lean Manufacturing model.
To offer the upgrade and refurbishment of existing watches.
Omit the use of non-recyclable materials from every stage of the production process. Although Paulin hasn't used plastic packaging since 2014, factories and shipping companies are less conscious, and plastic is still widely used. We've begun working with our suppliers to find sustainable alternatives.