Chickpiece

Vegan Jewellery

Oh Hi There! Welcome to the About bit! We are so happy that you are here!!

Chickpiece is a small, independent company based in Southend on Sea, Essex. We are a passionate, happy little bunch here at Chickpiece and very excited to tell you all about our empowering collection of charms. We wanted to promote a beautiful lifestyle in a beautiful way and so Chickpiece was born.

Chickpiece is more than jewellery, it’s a lifestyle, a set of Identities, a set of sparkling gold & silver jewels that we believe fit together, mapping the way to the real treasure trove – a wonderfully fulfilling & enriched life for you and for the world you live in.

Each of our six delicate charm collections are representing a beautiful ethos, an ‘Identity’ and when each of the six Identities are applied in harmony in our day to day lives we feel that we are truly living a lifestyle that will not only nourish us as individuals but enrich & restore this awesome planet that we are so blessed to inhabit. We believe in walking this earth in a way that causes the least harm possible. We live with compassion and kindness at our core.

We hope that you will love our jewellery and our concept as much as we do and that it inspires you and people around you.

Welcome To Chickpiece, beautiful jewellery for a beautiful lifestyle. Be the change you want to see…

Eco Policy

When it comes to our own health, and the health of our planet, we refuse to wait until ‘the inconvenience of staying the same outweighs the inconvenience of change’. Lets just do the right thing!

Here at Chickpiece HQ, we go to great lengths to source ethical, sustainable materials in our jewellery and biodegradable materials in our consumables which can make things that little bit more time consuming and costly but we want to do everything we can and continue to educate ourselves and evolve so that we can have peace of mind that our activities are contributing as little as possible to the strain that our overstretched, exhausted world is currently under – whilst still being able spread our message.

We are not professing to be experts and this is a relatively new venture for us. We are learning on the job and there are lots of things that we are aspiring to achieve and will continue to fine tune our processes as the business grows and enables us to do so.

Your money is the currency for change…..

We dream of the day when there are sustainable, affordable alternatives for every aspect of our lives and scrutinise every tiny detail of our processes to ensure that we do the best that we can within our financial limits. Collectively, we consumers have the power to disrupt these age-old supply chains and there is no better way to get that message heard than how you invest your money – your money is the currency for change, demand better. Promoting this message to the masses in order to affect change is part of our mission and one of the fundamental motivations behind our charms.

We believe that as the dominant species on this planet, it is our responsibility to do everything we can to protect our home & everyone & everything that we share it with. There are always things we can do better in our day to day lives and every little thing that we do has a consequence, good or bad. Now is the time, more than ever, to play our part. Here are some of the ways that Chickpiece is doing its bit:

Our Charms

The majority of our 925 sterling silver is recycled and we are always looking for ways to use more recycled silver. We will only use gold vermeil (gold plate over sterling silver) or gold filled (thick gold over alloy that shouldn’t wear under normal usage) meaning that these are precious metals that can be treasured forever.

We didn’t want to use a cheap alloys and make a low quality products as we feel that these can sometimes be more easily disregarded and disposed of.

A Bit about Beads

We have researched beads extensively and been interested, but un-surprised, at the unethical/unsustainable standards in which some beads are produced. What was surprising was how the purchase of certain beads indirectly fund acts of terrorism and supports terrorist groups.

We have been enlightened as to the varying employment standards in different parts of the world and are aware of pitfalls to look out for where products may be masquerading as something they are not based on a small technicality in their production, for example, we learnt about items for jewellery being made under unfair trading laws in Sialkot, India, but finished in Europe and therefore able to be sold as fair trade under European Laws. It is evident that this type of practice is rife and not to mention the fake beads on the market that contain barely any of the precious stones that they say they do.

It is widely known that due to many precious rocks and minerals for the use in jewellery being sourced from all over the world, that it is often near impossible to track the raw materials used in the full supply chain from mining to transportation to supply, design, manufacture, wholesale and finally distribution. There are often many small producers involved that are hard to trace.

We of course steer clear of suppliers that we feel are contributing to anything unethical and unsustainable and we select suppliers that have very good ethical & eco policies, are like minded in their mission and who are continually reviewing processes around the world for the products that they sell.

One of my favoured suppliers actually meets, in person, all of her suppliers from around the world in order to be sure of what is being imported to her company. The consumables in all of the companies that we use are also eco friendly wherever possible and as a company, Chickpiece will happily re-purpose packaging received into the business.

Plastic was never an option for us and we were looking into glass which is sustainable in many cases, however, we settled on Amazonite as our favoured beads for our Chickpiece products for many amazing reasons and we have an extensive section on the benefits of this special, beautiful mineral. The addition of a bead or two was only ever going to be a decorative accent, however, we are so in love with Amazonite now that we have stumbled across it that we feel that it’s presence on our Complement Jewellery is every bit as beautiful as the Charms themselves. Find out more here.

Seed Paper Wallet Insert

This is something that we are very excited about. We hated the thought of producing more paper waste yet needed to use something as a setting in the wallets for each of our charms. What better way to do this than by turning a problem into a plus and actually producing flowers for the bees, instead of more waste! Sounds far fetched, right? No.

We found Seed Paper which, when ready to dispose of, you wet into a pulp and plant in a little pot, then transfer to the garden when it starts to sprout and hey presto, you’ve made another step towards helping the environment, got some pretty flowers, buzzy bees to boot and bought yourself something beautiful in the process.

Hemp Cord

It was important to us to use a natural cord for our Complement Necklets and Hemp Cord seemed the obvious answer. Leather was of course never going to be an option and materials like Faux Suede and Nylon weren’t hitting the mark for us either. We are in love with the natural Hemp Colour Palettes and love working with this versatile, long lasting material. We wax polish our cords to give them durability. We use Soy wax, NOT bee’s wax.

Hand Stamped Stainless Steel Tag

We hand stamp our very own bespoke stainless steel tags for our Jewellery wallet presentation charms instead of using machinery and cheaper alloys or plastic. This cute guy is built to last and we hope that you decide to keep our happy Chickpiece trademark charm so that you can remember us!

Cardboard Wallet

We love our delicate cardboard presentation wallets and whats more they are recycled and 100% recyclable. We hope that you love them too.

Postage and packaging

We have researched the most innovative packaging options and are proud to say that our post box size packages are 100% biodegradable. We will walk wherever possible to our local post office to cut down on emissions for our part of the journey when dispatching your package.

If you think there is something that we have missed please do get in touch with us at customerservice@chickpiececharms.co.uk. We are always striving to improve processes where we can. We are always happy to learn.

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