Why Ethical Living?

At Lovebrook & Green, we believe that living consciously is rooted in intention. Ethical living invites us to pause, choose with care and surround ourselves with objects that are not only beautifully made but meaningfully conceived.

Shopping at Lovebrook & Green is a form of consuming that tells a deeper story – of skilled hands, conscientious practices and values that resonate across time. 

This is the essence of our curation: enduring pieces created with integrity, connecting you not only to the product, but to the maker, the Earth and a community devoted to thoughtful living.

How we assess brands

How we assess brands

Only those brands that meet our ethical criteria are invited through our doors. Each must satisfy one or more of the following standards:

  • B Corp certified
  • Positive Luxury Butterfly Mark certified
  • A score over 50% or higher on our in-house ethical methodology
  • Approval for durability by Buy Me Once

Where environmental benefit claims are made, brands must provide verified third-party proof, which we verify ourselves or share transparently. 

About B Corp certification

A globally recognised hallmark, B Corp Certification is awarded to businesses that demonstrate measurable responsibility, transparency, and a commitment to positive impact.

To become certified, companies must amend their legal structure to embed the B Corp Legal Requirement – ensuring their duty extends beyond profit, to people and planet alike.

Assessment spans a business’s full footprint: from employee welfare and customer care to community engagement and environmental stewardship. Recertification every three years ensures continued progress and accountability.

https://bcorporation.uk/

Positive Luxury Butterfly Mark

Positive Luxury’s Butterfly Mark recognises luxury brands that meet rigorous criteria across governance, environment, social impact, and innovation. Certification is granted following a rigorous evaluation grounded in international agreements, global frameworks and forward-looking regulations. To maintain the Butterfly Mark, brands must undergo recertification every two years, ensuring their practices continue to meet evolving sustainability standards.

The Positive Luxury assessment framework evaluates brands across 23 key sustainability drivers, organised into four pillars: Governance, Environment, Social, and Innovation. Each driver includes tailored questions that take into account the company’s size, business model, operations, and global footprint. Depending on these factors, a small business may be assessed on approximately 250 data points, while a larger organisation could be evaluated on over 500 – offering a detailed understanding of a brand’s overall impact.

https://www.positiveluxury.com/

Buy Me Once

Buy Me Once independently evaluates products for exceptional longevity, design integrity, and repairability. Their assessments include:

  • High-quality, resilient materials
  • Skilled craftsmanship
  • Robust warranties and repair options
  • Timeless design principles
  • Ethical, low-impact manufacturing
  • Meaningful product innovation

Their benchmark: items built to last a lifetime – so they only need to be bought once.

https://www.buymeonce.co.uk/blogs/research/the-buymeonce-research-process

The Lovebrook & Green methodology

For brands not yet certified, we apply our own ethical framework – an in-house methodology developed over four years by the Green Salon, the ethical consultancy from which Lovebrook & Green emerged.

This methodology, designed in consultation with global sustainability experts, assesses brands against 76 weighted criteria across areas such as:

  • Transparent, circular supply chains
  • Maker wellbeing and fair labour
  • Water and ecosystem protection
  • Low-impact, verified materials
  • Product durability and repairability
  • Net-zero commitment and verified emissions tracking

Brands must achieve a minimum 50% score to be listed. They are granted a one-year grace period to complete the full verification process – an approach designed to support smaller makers on their journey towards recognised certification.

Supply Chain

We consider a company’s entire supply chain and the sourcing of their raw materials.

  • Raw Materials – Brands should be aiming to source materials with a reduced social and environmental impact, and we expect to see brands provide evidence of this. Any materials used should ideally carry certification such as Global Recycled Standard (GRS), Fairtrade, or Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), and where possible brands should always aim to source locally. Certain ‘problem’ materials like palm oil should always carry certification such as Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO). Brands should not be using virgin plastic except for cases where no suitable alternative exists (e.g. for food hygiene purposes), or where a transitioning brand is phasing out their previous virgin plastic use in favour of other materials. Where potential conflict minerals are used, we expect to see a brand have robust policies in place to ensure that their materials are being sourced ethically. 
  • Water Conservation – Brands and their suppliers should have strategies in place to reduce the amount of water used during material sourcing or production.
  • Disallowance of Polluting Chemicals – Brands and suppliers should hold certification that proves that they avoid the use of chemicals which are harmful to the environment, such as Leather Working Group (LWG) or Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS), which confirm the use of safer alternatives.  
  • Prevention of Water Supply Contamination – Brands should provide evidence that they and their suppliers have policies in place to protect water supplies from pollutants. This might involve practices such as water purification post-use or avoiding the use of potentially harmful substances.

Eco-System Health

We believe that a brand’s operations should not be harmful to the land which they (or their suppliers) are using. 

  • Responsible Land Use – Brands and their suppliers should not be exploiting the land that they are operating on. Where applicable, they should be collaborating with any indigenous communities that live in or near the area and ensuring that they have policies in place to restore forests and woodland where operations require them to be harvested. 
  • Maintenance of Soil Health – Where brands source plants or plant-derived products, we expect to see them provide evidence that they or their suppliers have used responsible agriculture.  There should be evidence of organic certification (except for transitioning farms) or producers should be utilising regenerative or biodynamic methods to avoid monocultures and poor soil health. Producers should also be monitoring the amount of carbon sequestered by their land and crops.

Maker Wellbeing

The protection of employee rights is crucial to an ethical company. It is preferable for brands and suppliers to have publicly available codes of conduct which make their labour policies transparent.

  • Fair Pay – Brands should provide evidence that they and their suppliers provide reasonable working hours and a fair wage to their employees.
  • No Use of Illegal Labour – There should be no use of child or forced labour, and we expect to see brands have policies in place to ensure that their suppliers are not utilising these practices. 
  • Upholding Equality in the Workplace – Brands and their suppliers should have policies in place to ensure that employees are not discriminated against based on their gender, race, beliefs, sexual orientation, neurodiversity, or disabilities.
  • Workplace Wellbeing – Brands should provide evidence that they and their suppliers have policies in place to ensure workplace safety and that they respect the rights of their employees to submit complaints without retaliation. They should also have initiatives in place to support the mental wellbeing of their employees.

Giving Back

It’s not enough for brands to simply ensure their own operations aren’t harmful; we want to see a brand’s commitment to giving back to the community and helping to heal the planet.

  • Charitable Donations – Where brands give money to charity, we expect to see them provide the amount donated and the name of the charity/charities that they have donated to.
  • Local Investment and Collaboration – Brands should be engaging with their local community. This might take the form of providing employees with paid volunteering days, providing internships or apprenticeships aimed at locals, or collaborating with universities to contribute towards research into sustainability.

Empowering Women

We believe that brands should be taking measures to ensure the empowerment of women in the workplace. 

  • Workplace Empowerment – Brands should have initiatives in place to increase the amount of women in leadership positions, such as through promoting these roles to women during the recruitment process or through providing leadership training to female employees. Brands should ideally provide statistics for the amount of women in these roles compared to men and produce an annual pay gap report.
  • Parental Leave – Brands should offer parental benefits beyond the legal requirement of the country that they are situated in. This will most often take the form of increased maternity leave or flexible working arrangements. 

Animal Wellbeing

Brands must be committed to animal welfare.

  • Cruelty Free – Brands selling products that are at risk of having used animal testing must have certification, such as PETA or Leaping Bunny, to confirm that they are cruelty-free. 
  • Organic – Animals owned by brands or by their suppliers must have access to organic pasture and feed, and we expect to see policies against the unnecessary use of medication such as routine antibiotics.
  • Free-Range – Animals owned by brands or by their suppliers must have access to large, open areas where they may exhibit natural behaviour. We expect to see brands provide information on the area that the animals have access to and the times that they are allowed to access it.

Circular Business

Brands should aim to reduce the amount of waste present at the beginning and end of a product’s life cycle.

  • Waste Reduction – Brands and their suppliers should have policies in place to limit the amount of waste produced during the creation of a product or through overproduction of a product. These might include policies such as the reuse of offcuts, small production runs, or only making products to-order.
  • Creation of Products from Waste – Where possible, brands should aim to use recycled and deadstock materials within their product and packaging. Certain materials, such as plastic, should have their origin as a recycled product confirmed by a reputable certification such as GRS.
  • Reuse Initiatives – Due to the limitations of curbside recycling, we expect to see brands take responsibility for the end-life of their products through encouraging customers to return used items to them for reuse or recycling. 

Transparency

Crucially, all of the information above must be easily accessible to the consumer. We want to see clear information across any websites and impact reports, which not only include their successes but hold themselves responsible for the areas which need improvement.

  • Clear Information – Brands should not obfuscate their information related to ethics and sustainability and at minimum should share their emissions, material sourcing, and supplier policies with their consumers.
  • Verification – Brands should share information on any third-party verification that they or their suppliers have obtained regarding their ethical and sustainability policies. 
  • Certification – Brands and their suppliers should have certification to prove that they adhere to their ethical and sustainability claims, or should provide evidence that they are working towards accreditation. 
  • Regular In-House Audits – Annual audits should be conducted by brands to review their sustainability policies and practices, with information provided on any progress made within the past year. The results of these should be made available to their consumers. 

Net Zero

Companies need to be gathering data on their emissions so that they can set in place plans for decarbonisation and/or offsetting that are accurate to the needs of their business. 

  • Data Gathering – Brands should have evidence that they are tracking all 3 scopes of their emissions, and they should additionally be sharing this data with their consumers. Where GHG emissions are tracked, we prefer to see the data presented as a precise number. 
  • Decarbonisation Plans – Brands should have plans in place for reaching Net Zero and transparent goals to help them achieve this. They should also be sharing information on the progress of their Net Zero strategy.
  • Offsetting – Where a brand has yet to fully decarbonise, we expect to see them take measures to reduce their current impact through verified offsetting schemes. Where offsetting is used, we prefer to see longer-term methods of carbon removal such as Direct Air Capture in comparison to reforestation or conservation projects.
  • Verification – Where a brand meets our above criteria, we look for third party verification to confirm that the brand’s emissions and offsetting reports are accurate, or that their decarbonisation plans have been reviewed. This might involve evidence that the brand has worked with an independent sustainability consultancy or that they have been recognised as carbon neutral by a trusted organisation.