Eco-Friendly Awards: Sustainable Award Options at Bennett Awards
As we seek to become a continuously “greener” business out of concern and care for our planet’s natural resources and systems, Bennett Awards is excited to introduce a new and growing set of sustainable award options for customers who also want to support greener manufacturing with their purchasing power. With new innovations in sustainable materials becoming increasingly available, this kind of intentional production and purchasing does not have to mean sacrificing aesthetic values and preferences when it comes to the things we want to enjoy.
What are Eco-Friendly Awards?
Bennett Awards has always sought to create recognition awards that are thoughtfully designed and crafted as works of art in themselves, and we are finding that it is indeed possible to create visually exciting and luxurious-feeling pieces using materials that don’t create such a negative impact on the health of our natural ecosystems.
This means creating our awards, trophies, and plaques with materials that don’t require harmful natural-resource extraction, including recycled and renewable materials. It also means striving to minimize waste, pollutants, and unnecessary resource-use in the manufacturing and shipping processes, which requires commitment to data collection and transparency about these factors. What remains consistent with the premium Bennett brand is these awards, like our traditional awards, have classically beautiful and captivatingly unique design elements, including customizable textures, colors, and shapes that come together for a striking award.
“What remains consistent with the premium Bennett brand is these awards, like our traditional awards, have classically beautiful and captivatingly unique design elements, including customizable textures, colors, and shapes that come together for a striking award. ”
What are Our Eco-friendly Awards Made Of?
While we have been using recycled pewter since the day our doors opened at Bennett Awards, in more recent years our options for more sustainable awards have expanded. Two years ago, we launched the Awardology line of customizable awards which was intended to make sustainable award options more accessible for our customers. The Awardology pieces use sustainably sourced and recyclable woods, recyclable aluminum, and recyclable eco-acrylic, and for our fully custom awards, our eco-conscious customers can also choose recycled acrylic.
Finally, we are excited to announce our newest sustainable material available for our fully custom awards: recycled single-use plastic. Not only does this material make a conscious difference by allowing us to reuse an existing (and readily available) material in the world, but we also can celebrate that this material is diverted from where it would very likely be further contributing to our excessive (and destructive) global waste issues. Single-use plastic, in particular, has the ability to break down into microplastics which readily contaminate and poison our waterways and soils, which makes responsibly capturing this material and creating valuable art from it even more exciting for eco-conscious customers and clients.
Are Sustainable and Eco-Friendly Awards More Expensive?
As the demand for sustainable choices expands, the availability expands as well, and so does the technology needed to support the availability of these choices. As this technology develops and our grasp on sustainable systems grows, it becomes easier to obtain and process existing materials, which mitigates the cost compared to extracting an untouched resource directly from the environment. Our Awardology line has always been an eco-friendly awards option with prices that were intentionally comparable to traditionally cheaper and less-responsible materials. We wanted a wide range of customers to be able participate in the eco-conscious market without breaking their budgets.
We understand that sometimes companies participate in “greenwashing” to try to lure eco-conscious consumers without actually providing a sustainable product, but Bennett Awards seeks transparency from our producers and facilities, and offers the same transparency to our customers. For example, the wood we offer as a material in both our fully custom awards and our customizable predesigned awards comes from a sawmill that is FSC certified and a Rainforest Alliance Certified producer. We also try to remain thoughtful about the high resource demands of shipping internationally and seek manufacturing partners in North America near our production facility, like the facilities which manufacture our eco-acrylic and our recycled-plastic awards.
Bennett Awards is Committed to Sustainability
As a small business, we have always prioritized being ethical employers who take our responsibility to our employees seriously, and as the climate crisis worsens we recognize we have a responsibility to the planet as well. We know that so many potential recipients also value caring for our planet’s limited and rapidly diminishing resources, and will be touched even more deeply and significantly knowing that their gift of recognition also aligns with their values. With our eco-friendly awards, recipients can feel thoughtfully celebrated, inspired by the beauty of the innovative artistry, and enjoy peace of mind knowing that minimal harm was caused to the environments and non-human lives that allow our natural systems to thrive.