At Vert Nature, our commitment goes beyond corporate social responsibility, which is too often an empty façade. We prefer concrete acts, on our own scale, to grand statements.
A wild plant, harvested by hand
The harvest is done entirely by hand. Nothing is cultivated: the plant grows wild and we never intervene. No fertiliser, no watering, no petrol-driven machinery. We simply gather what nature produces, respecting the plant's cycles and its surroundings.
Choosing our materials
We pay close attention to the materials we use for our accessories, and to those used by our suppliers. Plastic is used only when we have no other choice.
For our accessories we use untreated raw beech wood, bought from a committed local supplier.
The paper that wraps our moxa rolls comes from a paper mill in the French Alps.
We chose refillable stainless steel lighters, for instance — good quality, built to last for years rather than be thrown away after a few uses.
Storing the moxa
We store our moxa in food-grade kraft paper bags made in France, away from light and moisture, to preserve its quality without resorting to plastic packaging.
Our shipping materials
We have replaced all our plastic shipping and packing materials — bubble wrap, padded envelopes, void fill — with honeycomb kraft paper and ecological packing solutions, made in France most of the time.*
* We still use up the plastic packaging left in our stock: throwing it away would be a waste. In the same spirit, we sometimes reuse plastic void fill received from elsewhere. Since it already exists, it may as well be given a second life rather than be discarded.
Making and sourcing as close to home as possible
We systematically look for the nearest manufacturers, favouring local production wherever we can. Several convictions lie behind this.
1. Avoiding pointless transport. There is no sense in shipping products thousands of kilometres when we can find them locally.
2. Preserving supply sovereignty. We want a degree of independence in our access to traditional Chinese medicine products. Recent years have shown how unstable trade can become when geopolitical tensions arise.
3. Sustaining our jobs and our skills. Favouring local and European manufacturing also means supporting the skills, trades and jobs of our regions, and making sure that this know-how is not lost.
This choice comes at the expense of price. It would certainly be simpler to order from a Chinese marketplace and obtain very competitive rates — bearing in mind, all the same, that an acupuncture needle is a medical device, subject to strict sterilisation requirements.
Finding genuinely local manufacturing often remains difficult. In that case we turn to European companies, even when they have their goods made elsewhere. That choice guarantees two things:
- Strict quality controls, in line with European standards.
- Relative sovereignty: should geopolitical difficulties arise, those companies are themselves obliged to find supply solutions in order to survive, which indirectly secures our own chain.
Some products have no local alternative for the time being. That is the case for our incense sticks, for which we have no choice but to source a Japanese product, and for our bamboo cases, which come from China. We remain alert to any opportunity to find a local manufacturer.
An honest approach
We do not claim to be perfect. Our approach is pragmatic: reduce plastic where we can, reuse what already exists rather than waste it, favour lasting materials, manufacture as close to home as possible and support local jobs. It is a gradual, honest and very real commitment.