The Charabanc Sustainability Journey

We first landed on the idea of developing a luxury car fragrance brand in 2016, at which point it was clear to see that over-consumption, irresponsible use of energy, misuse of single-use plastics, chemicals and so much more were doing untold damage to our planet. There was never any doubt in our minds that the product should not add to landfill and should be manufactured in the most sustainable way possible. We also knew that we had spotted a gap in the market and that it was very likely that other luxury fragrance brands would follow suit and adapt their own fragrances for use within the car. We were very keen to lead by example in the new sector we were about to create.

Our original product design brief was therefore to develop a diffuser for the car that would be built to last forever, using materials that would be timeless and wear beautifully over time. We wanted to adopt a scent refill approach to avoid the need to throw the entire diffuser away when it ran out. Part of this brief was to avoid using plastic EVA beads so often used in the fragrance industry but, as we all know, harmful to our environment. 

The packaging brief followed the same principles: only recycled and recyclable materials should be used and we didn’t want unnecessary cellophane wrapping either. 

We also wanted to develop a product that would be made by hand - entirely by hand, in such a way that our customers could tell this to be the case when they opened the diffusers up and held them in their own hands. A commitment to real hand craftsmanship meant that we would be able to not only control the environmental impact of our production (so many factory-built products come with factory-associated pollutants and waste) but we would also be able to invest in historic, artisanal skills that might otherwise be lost to the cookie-cutter commercial world.

Our leather lids are all wet-moulded. This is an old Tuscan tradition of working with leather, which results in a non-stitched and wonderfully tactile product. We now employ the extremely talented Ionuts Protescu to craft our leather his studio in Greenwich, London. Our leather is vegetable dyed and hand-picked by a multi-generational company based in Northampton who are Leather Working Group certified.

Our stainless steel diffusers are spun by hand, helping keep the very British tradition of metal spinning alive and thriving. Any metal leftover from the production process is collected up and recycled.

All of these decisions cost more to us as product manufacturers but cost significantly less to the planet. We were committed to building a high end, sustainable product and had faith that our future customers would care about environmental impact as much as we did and appreciate that such a product would be worth paying more for.

In 2022 we embarked on a journey with Positive Luxury, the world’s leading luxury sustainability accreditation organisation, to endeavour to achieve their most coveted Butterfly Mark. We did this both to reassure our discerning customers that they could buy Charabanc products, safe in the knowledge that our ways of working and processes eschewed any unnecessary environmental impact but also because we wanted to learn how to do things better.

The journey that Positive Luxury has taken us on has made us interrogate our supply chain and require that each one of our suppliers sign up to the code of conduct that Positive Luxury helped us to develop. It also made us change some of our own new product development, packaging and policy decisions.

We received our accreditation in 2023 after a very long, investigative and rigorous process and after we had put a significant number of changes in place but the journey didn’t end there. It continues and will not stop. Indeed each year we are committed to adapting and iterating our products and production to find ways of minimising our negative impact on the environment.

Also in JOURNEYS

Journey from Venice to Lake Como

In the company of some very rare cars, a yellow 1967 Lamborghini Miura and a white 1967 Toyota 2000 to name but two, we travelled from Venice to Trento, from Trento to Corrubbio, Corrubbio to Moltraiso, finishing at Lake Como for the exclusive Concorso D’Eleganza.

Journey from Pendine to Pendine

This fabulous XK140 drove us from the expansive sands of Pendine, over the majestic Black Mountains, through the Forest of Dean to the gentle Cotswold landcapes and onto our final destination, Pendine Historics at Bicester Heritage.  

Journey from London to Brighton

Starting in Hyde Park on a cold and crisp morning, we took part in the famous London to Brighton Veteran Car Run, dressed for the era and the elements in this stunning 1903 Renault four-cylinder swing seat Tonneau. Final stop, the very Grand Hotel, Brighton.