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Community links From co-sponsored talks with the Chinese Museum to business workshops with local TAFE colleges to work with embroiderers’ guilds and our sponsorship of textile industry training in poor rural Indian villages, Beautiful Silks has a record of corporate social involvement which would be ambitious for an organisation hundreds of times bigger. We take our responsibility as employers, suppliers and purchasers seriously. We source sustainably. We supply ethically. We are an employer of choice for young Australians. We offer generous reseller commissions to regional craft co-operatives and discounts to schools and colleges.

We trade fairly

We have inspected the factories in which our products are made for safety and to ensure that the workers are not exploited. In particular, we have found the Chinese factories which produce the products we import to pay their workers a living wage in accordance with Chinese living conditions. Many of these factories have better conditions than some Australian factories. Indian co-operatives allow employment opportunities to the poorest of the rural poor. Indian factories do not employ children, have high female participation in management, and are open to NGO inspection.
We do not purchase from factories we suspect of using child labour. We do not use underpaid outworkers. We do not purchase manufactured goods from countries with poor labour-protection records such as Cambodia or Laos. We do not trade with totalitarian countries such as Burma.
We support a women's co-operative in rural Mandya, about 30 km from Mysore in Karnakata State, South India, operated by the Vikasana Institute of Rural Development. We aim to provide a living wage to the poorest of the world's poor. Click here to see how we're doing it. Sheila Prasad started knitting for us in our latest project in November 2012.

Even our working environment is sustainable:
We're carbon-neutral. We've planted more than enough trees to offset our carbon production in our lifetime on our Warrnambool property (over 4000)!! Our Warrnambool base also has water-recycling, composting toilets, waste-minimisation and renewable on-site energy production. Even our web-hosting is carbon neutral. Our Melbourne plant has its own bio- diesel powered electric generator. Our vehicles are fueled with alternative fuels (and some are bicycles - look for our cute bicycle trailers and electric motorised delivery bikes).

Towards a "nothing artificial" product and packaging range.

We sell natural products, and we sell them in natural or recyclable packaging. We are moving to packing in silk, paper, calico or cotton and have achieved our aim of being 90% new-plastic-free (apart from post-office products) by weight of new materials used. We were the first in the industry to move to using post-industrial plastic waste for large items. Our fabric bags are now for sale to the general public.

We don't sell polyester. Our dye range is the most environmentally-friendly available.

Employment

We are committed to training young Australians in the textile industry. Whilst many employers are sacking staff and at a time when youth unemployment in Victoria has reached over 1 in 3 (Source: ABS Cat. 6202.0 Table 16.) we have actually created doubled our staff in the last 6 months and created two new equivalent full time jobs. We welcome new graduate Saskia Baur-Schmid who is returning to our staff after her studies in December 2012. We are assisting new graphic designer Sarah Byrne who conducts her business from our premises on Mondays and Tuesdays. See our Schools page for details on our 2013 intern program.

Our directors have been keynote speakers at events ranging from the National Wool Museum's Scarf Festival to the Brisbane Textile Event hosted at the Brisbane Convention Centre to the Gordon TAFE/Deakin Uni sustainability symposium. They hosted the 2012 Natural Dye Symposium at our Fitzroy premises and gave several well-attended lectures. They are available to speak at your next event by negotiation.

Email us here!

Story of Silk CD - by the Beautiful Silks team $30
CD includes slides of the well-maintained factories which supply us , with workers who earn good local salaries and who enjoy modern safe machinery and remarkably good amenities. All proceeds to the Vikasana project.

Story of Indian Waste to Wealth project CD - by the Beautiful Silks team $30
CD includes slides of the villagers whose lives have been improved by our project. All proceeds to the Vikasana project.