At Harrows we believe in sustainability and responsible manufacturing. We are committed to minimizing our impact on the world around us.
At Harrows we believe in sustainability and responsible manufacturing. Latest technology and time-honoured craft go hand in hand to create products that bring people together and are designed with longevity in mind, extending the useful life and in turn reducing waste.
We see sustainability as an ever-evolving challenge. We are constantly innovating to reduce waste and minimize our impact on the world around us. Explore our Environmental, Social and Governance Pillars to understand how we are progressing these philosophies.
When the objects around us are inclined to lose value, Harrows have set out to create beautiful and sustainable products that add value to their environment for years to come. Products with social relevance and timeless design principals, made from quality materials and built to last.
Harrows products are largely constructed from bio-based materials, and we focus on making sustainable choices and looking for sustainable alternatives. The timber used in our manufacturing is sourced from certified responsibly managed forests.
Wherever possible we produce our furniture in our own factory in Timaru, to minimise both international and local freight volumes. Manufacturing inhouse also gives us full control and transparency over the quality and origin of all materials.
We believe in circularity. Alongside our passion for making beautiful products designed to last, we acknowledge that requirements for interior spaces will change and evolve over time, as will their furniture needs. With majority of our range being manufactured or finished onsite, these can be refurbished, initiating a fresh lifecycle for the product with minimal waste.
Our consumption and waste reduction initiatives include freighting in kitset where ever possible to reduce freight miles; blanket wrapping in transport to reduce packaging; separating and recycling cardboard and soft plastics; returning upholstery foam offcuts to the manufacturer for reconstitution; improving the efficiency of material consumption through research and development, and selecting sustainable or recyclable materials wherever possible.
A range of Harrows’ own NZ made designs carry GreenRate™ Level C certification and PlatinumHEALTH™ HealthRATE™ certifications under the Global GreenTag International Product Health Declaration™ (GreenTag PHD™) program.
GreenRate is a third party product certification scheme recognised in the Green Star® tools with the New Zealand Green Building Council (NZGBC) and GBCA in Australia, by HomeStarNZ®, and compliant with specific IWBI® WELL™ features under V1.0 and v2.0. The GreenTag PHD is recognised by WELL™ and LEED® and HealthRATE is recognised in NZGBC’s Green Star tool.
Harrows obtained Forest Stewardship Council® (FSC®) certification in 2015. As a FSC® certificate holder, Harrows is ensuring our timber products are sourced from responsibly managed forests.
Being FSC® certified ensures the forests are managed in a way that not only takes care of the animals and plants that call it home, but also workers and local communities who rely on forests, and indigenous groups whose heritage connects them to forest landscapes.
As part of our commitment to sustainability and responsible manufacturing, Harrows are proud to be partnering with Wisewool to phase out the use of synthetic materials in our upholstered products.
We have replaced the traditionally synthetic layers of melty fibre upholstery wrap with Wisewool needle-punched blanketing in a selection of our Harrows Design Collection products.
Harrows are proud to have commenced certified carbon footprint measurement in 2021, recording a gross reduction in our first year, and continuing to record year-on-year reductions in our emissions as a percentage of sales through conscious initiatives onsite. By understanding the emissions profile of our business operations, we can start to strategically reduce them.
Ekos helps develop and supports carbon projects that grow and protect permanent restorative forests in New Zealand and the Pacific Islands.
Harrows is proud to partner with All Heart NZ to assist our clients in redirecting and repurposing unwanted furniture, and more often than not, divert these items from landfill. All Heart NZ is a registered charitable trust that partners with corporates to practically redirect and repurpose their redundant and unwanted items. If your business or client is moving office, changing furniture or I.T, has end of life or end of line products, All Heart NZ will re-direct your unwanted corporate items for community good.
In an effort to divert the textile offcuts from our own manufacturing process from landfill, Harrows is pleased to be partnering with Upparel. Upparel is Australia’s and New Zealand’s leading textile recycling company, having diverted over 10 million items from landfill and prevented an estimated 30 million kg of greenhouse gases from polluting our atmosphere. Their mission is to eradicate textile waste and extend the life cycle of textiles through the reuse, repurpose and recycle model. Upparel creates new products from recycled textiles as well as uses the ‘felting’ method to create filling for mattresses, cushions, bean bags, pet beds, home insulation, roading, building and construction materials.
As the world’s only renewable building material, Harrows are proud to use American ash in the contraction of our solid timber furniture that is sourced from responsible sources. Our suppliers practice natural forest regeneration, creating clime change-resilient forests.
When wood products are harvested and used in the construction of furniture, the carbon is effectively “sequestered” or locked away from the atmosphere for a long period of time. By using solid timber products, we can help reduce the amount of carbon in the atmosphere by storing it in wood products instead.
