Our Commitment to Sustainability

Durability is the core pillar in Buena Goods’ commitment to sustainability. Our goods are designed to be an intentional, long-lived purchase. If all bags could be cherished and last, that's fewer bags in the trash and that's our goal.

Buena Goods is all about the mesh —durable, adorable mesh. We are committed to learning everything we can about it and its backstory — the impacts of the manufacturing process, where our decisions matter most, and what are the right questions to be asking. We’ve hired an expert in sourcing and impact, Wiluma Consulting, because there’s just so much to know and understand. It’s been so illuminating. Turns out, the "Last Mile" of delivery accounts for a surprisingly big portion of a product’s total supply chain carbon emission. Since air freight is significantly more carbon intense than ground, we’ve added a slow shipping option at checkout. If it's three days before your mom's birthday, ship it quick! But when time isn’t a concern, choose the slow option. This is going to be a longterm relationship anyways, what's a few more days!?

Our raw materials currently come from Alabama, China, Taiwan, and Japan. We are committed to finding suppliers who are innovating with plastic alternatives and can produce a plastic mesh that is as durable as the one we currently use. We’re excited about bio-based alternatives and recycled materials. There are incredible people out there making leather-like materials from banana and pineapple based fibers. We're so pumped about it for someone else's product.

It’s not fair to say we’re only about the mesh. Polyester webbing is an important ingredient in our bag recipe. So often straps are the fail point in re-usable totes. Our straps are a single, through-body piece of webbing that continues all the way around the bag. So your load is supported by webbing from below. Design decisions that support durability are our first defense, but also it’s a lot of polyester webbing. That raw material is totally available with recycled content already. We are currently prototyping and R&Ding with some recycled poly webbings. Do they meet our durability standards or is it a reasonable amount of trade off? Stay tuned…