Earth Pines - making sustainability smell better
Earth Pines: Providing our fellow outdoor enthusiasts with quality, sustainable options and ideas to lower their environmental impact during their own adventures.
More Adventure, Less Impact.
Are you looking for companies selling sustainable products? Join me in exploring the company Earth Pines, diving into their passions and drivers for tackling smelly shoes in a sustainable way.
Earth Pines is a sustainable outdoor equipment brand. Their mission is to provide fellow outdoor enthusiasts with quality, sustainable options and ideas to lower their environmental impact during their own adventures.
What is Earth Pines?
“Earth Pines is based in Edinburgh, Scotland and started in September 2020. It was founded and directed by the two of us, AKA, Lewis and Perri. After years of travelling, we became more and more aware of the climate crisis, and we wanted to spread our knowledge to those around us. We initially started creating small, sustainable solutions to help our friends and family lower their environmental impact. We soon progressed to exploring quality product options that we were excited to share around the world.
In light of our passion for outdoor pursuits and travel, we naturally established a brand that reflects our personalities. Earth Pines connects our like-minded and earth-friendly community through sustainable outdoor equipment, enhancing every adventure.
One of our main aims is for our customers to buy once and enjoy again and again. We believe in durable equipment that is built to last every journey and adventure.
We understand what goes into quality products and know the difference reusable products can make to our planet. Less waste equals less landfill and ocean dumping.
All of our products are therefore as sustainable as possible, and made from a variety of natural materials and ingredients.”
Why did you start it?
“It all began with a few small sustainable accessories such as our steel straws, bamboo cutlery sets and bamboo straws. The feedback was fantastic as our community wanted to grow and learn other ways that they could further reduce their carbon footprint.
Like many others, we have become increasingly alarmed about the quantity of waste, especially plastic in our day to day living. From both having witnessed the horrifying amount of waste going into landfill, and single use plastic being used around the world, we wanted to help make eco decisions much easier for everyone.
Our huge passion for the outdoors made the Earth Pines brand an easy choice for us, making the decision to create sustainable outdoor equipment.
We wanted to provide alternate products that are made to last and can be used again and again. We believed that by creating small products that can be used in your everyday life or as a travel companion, we could encourage gradual changes to the lifestyle of others.”
What are any struggles you’ve had on the journey?
“One of our main struggles was trying to get the correct ingredients to make the formula inside of the inner ActiSole bags sustainable, and to avoid using harsh and environmentally damaging chemicals
Making our packaging was also not as easy as we hoped, as to sell on Amazon there are specific requirements you need to meet. One being that our product had to be securely enclosed in a plastic bag. This is something we would love to avoid and hopefully this is a change we can make in the future.
Our inner bags also needed to be a specific material in order for the charcoal to effectively absorb the moisture from the internal shoe. Therefore only the charcoal inside of the bag can be poured into garden soil, instead of the entire inner bag being fully compostable.”
What is your inspiration?
“Our inspiration lies within the outdoors, nature and sport.
With our passion for sustainability and becoming more environmentally conscious, we wanted to develop a better solution to help this problem for everyone. Our love for the outdoors is what then inspired our designs.”
How do you choose your products?
“Our products have been created through the struggles we have experienced during our travels and hiking trips. We found that some equipment that we were using was not both sustainable and good quality. We then wanted to create better options and share those with others.
Using single use cutlery is the easy option when you are on the go so we desired to create a simple pouch of bamboo cutlery and straws for adventure seekers to use on their travels.
Like many others, after multi-day hikes or camping trips we used an abundance of newspaper to soak up the moisture from our shoes. Especially in Scotland, there are very few dry days on the hills! “
What is ActiSole?
“ActiSole is a set of natural shoe deodorisers. There are 2 bags, both containing Activated Bamboo Charcoal which is designed to absorb sweat and moisture from your active footwear to eliminate odour.
Sweaty soles can cause bacteria growth, which can lead to athlete's foot. Therefore, ActiSoles were created as the perfect fresheners to prevent fungi, and eliminate any odour without the use of an air freshener spray.
ActiSole have a very small amount of natural lavender beads in them to give your shoes a fresh fragrance but avoid being too overpowering.
Our refillable inserts can be removed via the side zipper, cut open and poured into your garden soil to be safely decomposed. Our high-quality and durable outer material is machine washable, so it is ready to be refilled.
We provide our customers with a generous bundle: A set of ActiSole with 2 free refills, and every box also includes a carabiner for you to easily clip your ActiSoles onto your hiking backpack or gym bag. They are extremely lightweight so they can be added to your camping essentials and taken on every adventure.
With proper care, ActiSole will live for approximately 6-12 months. By reactivating the charcoal by leaving them out in the sun for a few hours every month, they can last up to 2 years.”
How did you develop it?
“We tried and tested several shoe deodorisers for several months to make sure we could develop exactly what our customers wanted, to avoid having smelly shoes. We pulled together our ideas and gathered various feedback from our active and outdoorsy friends and family as well as surveys sent out to a random select of people. This way we could solve every pain point our customer had.
We wanted to make ActiSole was as sustainable as possible. By doing this, we designed the bag with a side zip, allowing for the charcoal bags to be removed after the charcoal has been fully utilized.
Our energetic design of AcitSole reflects our passion for nature and being outdoors. We wanted the set to be as bright as possible to create a vibrant and cheerful impression.”
What are your goals for the company?
Our goals are to continue teaching others about the importance of protecting the environment and providing small sustainable steps in order to help the journey of others to become more sustainable.
The Earth Pines lifestyle encourages everyone to immerse themselves in nature and explore beyond where they have gone before. Our goal is to provide the tools and tips for everyone to do this sustainably.
Whether we're hiking, travelling, running, heading to the gym or on our daily commute, there are so many small, easy changes that we can make to our lifestyles and equipment in favour of our planet.
I’m sure you will agree that there's no better time than the present! We believe that together, we can achieve our mission to reduce single-use material pollution.
Why is sustainability important to you?
Sustainability is important not only to us, but the wildlife, nature and our surroundings. Our motto is ‘with less impact comes more adventure’. We desire to create a world for adventure seekers whilst causing the smallest, or no amount of damage to our planet.
In order to protect our planet, we need to buy less, recycle, and reuse as much as possible. Having seen our highlands littered with waste and our oceans full of plastic pollution, it’s becoming even more obvious that actions need to be taken, immediately. In order to achieve this, achievable and realistic changes can be made.
We want to create products that are not only sustainable to the environment but also the people that are purchasing them. We want to lower our carbon footprint and help others do the same.
What would you recommend to someone to help them on their sustainability journey?
“Our first piece of advice would be to buy less. Reuse and recycle as much as you can. Stitch up your old clothes, turn your milk cartons into plant pots, or swap your cling film to a beeswax wrap.
When making purchases, always check the materials used, where they have come from and what they are made of. Choose recycled or biodegradable materials when possible. It is important that your purchases are as sustainable and ethical as possible.
There are also some great articles and documentaries that you can learn from. Once you have implemented this into your own lifestyle, spread and share the word to all your friends and family. The more we learn and take action, the faster we can help save the planet.”
Are there any areas you’d like to improve yourself?
We want to continue researching and finding new ways we can be more sustainable in our day to day lives, as well as a business. Shopping local and in zero waste supermarkets are high on our priority list but to shop with less plastic waste completely would be a dream.
For Earth Pines, we eventually want to sell through our website so we do not need to rely on Amazon, therefore we can make our customers' experience even more personable.
Hopefully we can then avoid using a plastic bag as part of our packaging.
https://earthpines.com/
How are you addressing them?
When we buy gifts, we always try our best to purchase from local and independent suppliers to help support all small businesses, as we know how hard it can be. Any small item such as our bamboo toothbrushes and shampoo bars are also purchased from zero waste supermarkets. We also love a weekly visit to our fresh fruit and vegetable store.
We are continuously researching environmentally friendly methods and materials so ensure our products are as carbon neutral as possible. The dream would be to use only recycled or biodegradable products.
My review of EarthPines
In conclusion, I think this company is making great strides in the world of sustainable lifestyle products. Stocking some great eco swaps and sharing their journey whilst doing it.
The high level of transparency with the company is such a refreshing thing to see and hear. Everyone should be aware of the hurdles and the requirements needed to sell products and with that, the inefficiencies leading to unnecessary waste. This is why the honesty and the willingness to challenge the status quo is a wonderful attribute for this company.
The ActiSole product compared to other similar products I have tried has really great performance. The company actively tells you how to make the product last longer (not normal for some brands). Plus you get a refill with the initial purchase meaning its 1-2 years of use with one delivery.
To end, you can find similar companies selling similar products online or maybe nearer you. However, I find the USP for this company is the people who run it. You get a genuine feeling that they care about what they’re doing. Willingness to share tips and ideas for all. A real sense of community with all involved with EartPines. So I highly recommend taking a look at their website to learn more. A big tall man tick from me ✅
