Why Locally Sourced Matters

There‘s such a positive trend globally for shopping local whenever possible. We ’re finally waking up to the fact that we all have a part to play in reducing our carbon footprint.   The more local our purchases, the less impact we have on our already struggling planet. And just maybe, a conscious, communal effort could turn this climate change ship around.

At SuperBee, local sourcing is close to our hearts. While we often end up shipping our products far and wide, we reckon this is more than balanced out by the fact that we source all our materials as locally as we can.

While many eco-friendly makers in Europe and the US have to source their raw materials from overseas, we are very lucky here in Thailand to be able to acquire most of our materials very locally.

Our mission is to spread eco-friendly love around the world, but we want to do it in an ethical and mindful manner.  To that end we take local sourcing very seriously.  This also gives us the advantage of being able to properly check the credentials of our suppliers, both as eco-friendly companies and fair employers.

Here is the low-down on the local sourcing we do to make SuperBee products as carbon neutral as possible, before they are whisked off to customers far and wide.

Beeswax

The beeswax we use comes from a local bee-keeping cooperative, with great ethics and values, and even better, all the beekeepers are based in a 10-50km radius of our SuperBee workshop.

Cotton

Our cotton supply chain has been getting shorter and shorter over the years.  When we first launched, our GOTS certified organic cotton came from India, as most GOTS cotton does (we would guess this is the case for many other beeswax wraps too).  Then last year we found a new supplier in Central Thailand, moving much closer to home.  This year we’re very excited to announce that our GOTS certified organic cotton comes from Northern Thailand, our local region, and with cotton you can’t get much more local than that!

Fabric printing

Our fabric used to be printed near Bangkok but now we’re happy to have found a high-quality printer with food-safe inks, in Chiang Mai!

Coconut oil

Thailand is a major producer of high-quality organic coconut oil, and we’re lucky to have this available on our doorstep – so of course we buy this as locally as possible.

Tree resin

We only use high quality dammar resin but have yet to find this in Thailand. 

However, we have an excellent provider in neighboring Vietnam, who can send by land rather than air.

As we don’t need to use a lot of this ingredient, it fortunately adds very little to our carbon footprint.

Bamboo

Our bamboo  comes from either Thailand or neighboring Vietnam, but we’re keen to source it all locally – our next goal!

Packaging

We have found a great local social enterprise to make all our boxes and packaging.  Based in Chiang Mai our boxes only have to travel a few kilometers from their factory to our packing room!

A side benefit to sourcing products locally, is that we get to support local Thai businesses. The SuperBee production facility and offices are located in the mountains, just outside Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand. It’s a truly beautiful spot, but life in these picturesque mountains can be tough for some people. Many live a hand to mouth existence, surviving on a very low daily wage. Investing locally helps improve the lives of local people, something SuperBee is passionate about.