Building a truly eco and ethical business – behind the scenes at bide
13/7/2021
We invited Amelia Gammon, founder of bide to fill us in on how she launched the brand. It’s focus? Green cleaning that’s as impactful on the planet as it is for people.
Over to Amelia…
I am a gay mother of 4 who cares deeply about the planet and people.
Ten years ago I started to rethink what impact my lifestyle has on the planet. I was already a vegan but as I started planning a family the reality of the climate crisis really hit home. I started to make small changes around the home but there soon came an inflection point – our London home with a postage stamp garden was limiting our sustainability growth. We moved out to rural Wiltshire and converted our home to run from solar and airsource. We grow our own food and live a virtually plastic-free existence.
I wanted to help people adopt sustainable practices without having to commit to the research and expense that I experienced during my own journey. I wanted environmental choices to be available at the click of a button and truly affordable. Too often green goods have a high price tag making sustainable living a middle class privilege.
I could also see that the gap between the haves and the have-nots is widening at an alarming rate. As a society we need to shake up our value system and prioritise the distribution of wealth and opportunity for everyone to be able to be valued contributors to our economy.
From the outset, I knew the values that I wanted my business to espouse and this meant I could root my start-up in key environmental and ethical foundations.
bide is a young company, founded in March 2020, built to support the planet and the people that inhabit.
bide for the planet
bide’s first iteration was an eco cleaning subscription service which curated existing eco products into a managed doorstep service. I started with eco cleaning products because it is the area of the household that uses the most plastic. However, as I started researching the providence of eco cleaning products, the ingredients used, the manufacturing process, the packaging… I realised that they didn’t meet the strict environmental and ethical criteria I was looking for. So I decided to produce my own. This was the beginning of our home manufacturing network.
Our home manufacturing network produce our eco friendly consumer goods. We provide remote training and the raw ingredients to make our non-toxic, vegan products. Our system manufactures goods in a truly environmentally sound way. We do not make our products in large energy-consuming factories – we bring factories to people’s homes. Our vision is to bring production of sustainable products to within 30 miles of consumption. This reduces the road miles needed to get our goods to your front doors. This hyper-local approach is needed to rebuild communities and to operate environmentally sound economies.
- All of our raw ingredients are sourced within the UK.
- All of our pre-recycled and compostable packaging is sourced in the UK.
- We are 100% plastic free.
- All of our produced cleaning products are 100% toxin-free, 100% palm oil free, 100% cruelty free and 100% vegan.
- We do not ship overseas, we believe that the carbon footprint created with international distribution would counteract the eco good our products achieve. Instead, export for us means exporting our business model.
bide for people
We are a social enterprise which means that every aspect of our business planning, operation and optimisation is assessed against helping the unemployed become valued contributors to our economy.
Our home manufacturing network empowers marginalised & unemployed people to earn a living from home. We partner with employment charities to identify those most in need of our support.
Our home manufacturing system was designed to remove the barriers for people to seek work. The process of becoming a home manufacturer is simple, requires little training, with no previous experience or ability needed means that we can work with many individuals who would otherwise find it hard to get paid work. We can provide these individuals with structure, a sense of purpose and a degree of financial security.
As a LGBTQ+ founded social enterprise, the leadership team are very focused on equality, inclusion and diversity. We are partnerning with employment charities that represent the most excluded people. This includes refugees, people with alcohol and drug addictions, women with convictions, women seeking shelter and people with disabilities. We have a duty of care to treat our home manufacturing network and all employees with respect and decency. Understanding their unique set of needs to ensure they can achieve their own set of goals.
We pride ourselves in our championing the unchampioned and expect the same of our suppliers in terms of their equal opportunity records and supporting minorities in the work place.
We have created an organisation of transparency with no hierarchy. This means that everyone has access to anyone within the organisation. We believe that fairness, wellbeing and support are essential workplace values which we espouse in everything we do. We were founded in the height of the pandemic and as such our entire working system has been built in reaction to the demand for home working. In fact, we have no plans to have a central office. We believe that each member of our team should be able to choose where the best place is for them to work to their fullest. We evaluate partner environmental and social credentials and work with those who review, sign and commit to the bide code of conduct.
Thank you for supporting us and the other brands on Social Supermarket. Every purchase you make helps support the change that needs to happen.
The seas of change are coming, helped by the pandemic, where the consolidated action of people will force policy makers and corporations to put planet and people first. But this will take time and we need to invest in the change-makers with new, innovative business models to rise up and show how a new people centric global economy could work.
