About US
Welcome to Use UK, eco-friendly home & fashion
accessories and gifts
At
Use UK we love
beautiful things as much as we love being eco, so we make
sure that being eco-friendly doesn't mean compromising
style.
Our aim is to make
Eco-friendly home &
fashion and
gifts more desirable to the
design conscious and encourage
environmental
awareness in design.
Even small changes in purchasing decisions
help to alleviate the pressures on the planet's resources...
It's not just about the materials
being recycled, it is also about using sustainable and
natural materials, getting a unique product, being fair and paying a fair price
for handmade goods. You won't find any of our products
on the high street!
We also
re-use and recycle as much packaging as possible!
Use UK History
A love of beautiful design, and her mothers influence from
an early age to be eco aware led to Nicola Prodromou forming Use UK in 2005.
Her aim was to make eco friendly home and fashion accessories more desirable to
the design conscious and so encourage environmental awareness in design.
As environmental awareness grew, so Use UK grew and there
was a need to bring a partner on board, the ideal person was her mother Val.
“At Use UK we love beautiful things as much as we love
being eco, so we make sure that being eco-friendly doesn't mean compromising on
style”.
Our signature product was a range of lampshades, handmade
to the highest quality from 100% recycled cardboard and printed with limited
edition patterns.
“We love Use UK’s lampshades, they knock spots off the
boring beige ones on the high street”….Time Out
Always on the look out for eco materials to create
beautiful accessories, we then went on to make cushions using fabrics from
sample books.
From there our next find was leather remnants from the
furniture industry, destined for landfill but rescued to make gorgeous clutch
bags with vintage buckles and silk linings.
More bag designs followed and the bags have become so
desirable that the limited amount of 'eco' leather we could source was just not
enough to meet demand. We have had more and more enquiries for different
colours and styles of bags and to satisfy demand we have decided to expand our
range and also use leather sourced from a UK supplier who promotes sustainable
and appropriate environmental business practices within the leather industry and
follows guidelines set out by the Carbon Trust.
We
search hi and low for fabulously coloured and carved buttons and buckles of all
ages to make each clutch bag truly unique. And if you still can't find your
perfect bag you can use our bespoke bag making service
All bags are still individually designed and hand made in
our eco run workshop in South East England where every effort is made to
recycle, use recycled, reuse, reduce waste and reduce emissions. Wherever
possible our materials are bought in the UK or fair trade. (vegetable ivory
doves).
We are very proud of our customer service and strive to
make it the best possible and we welcome any comments or suggestions for
improvement.
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