Are Handmade Gifts Actually More Sustainable? An Honest Look at Cotton, Wax and Plastic

"Handmade" and "sustainable" get used as though they mean the same thing. They do not, and a brand that sells handmade things should say so.

Here is an honest account of where our materials actually sit.

Cotton is better than acrylic, but it is not free

Acrylic yarn is plastic. It is made from petroleum, sheds microplastics every time it is washed, and does not biodegrade. Most cheap craft yarn in India is acrylic.

We use cotton, which biodegrades and sheds no plastic. But cotton is thirsty — conventionally grown cotton uses a great deal of water and, in India, a disproportionate share of pesticides. Calling it "eco-friendly" without that caveat would be greenwashing.

The fair claim is narrower: for something you keep for years and wash occasionally, cotton is clearly the better of the two. For something disposable, neither is good.

Where wax candles sit

Our candles are wax with cotton wicks. Wax is wax — paraffin is petroleum-derived, soy and beeswax less so, and all of them burn.

The genuinely green thing about a sculptural candle is that most people never light it. A rose candle used as decor has roughly the footprint of an ornament, and lasts indefinitely. That is a real argument, and it is the one we make in our guide to caring for sculptural candles.

The thing that matters more than material

How long the object lasts, and whether it gets used.

A bamboo item bought, used twice and thrown away is worse than a plastic one kept for a decade. The carbon in almost any small object is dominated by making and shipping it, not by what it is made of — so the single greenest thing a gift can do is not end up in a drawer.

That is the honest case for handmade: not that the yarn is virtuous, but that people keep handmade things longer. A keychain used daily for five years has done far better than five cheap ones.

What we do and do not do

• We make to order. Nothing is produced speculatively, so there is no unsold stock to discount or discard. This is the biggest single difference from mass production.
• Our flowers do not die. A crochet bouquet replaces something that is flown in, refrigerated and binned within a week.
• We are small. Two people in Delhi, no warehouse, no air freight.
• We do not claim organic cotton. We buy ordinary cotton yarn. If that changes we will say so.
• We do not claim carbon neutrality. We have not measured it, so we will not assert it.

Packaging, honestly

Our boxes are card and the tissue is paper, both recyclable. Couriers add their own plastic to the outside of a parcel and we have no control over that. We would rather tell you than pretend otherwise.

How to buy a genuinely lower-impact gift

1. Buy something they will use. Everything else is secondary.
2. Buy one good thing, not three cheap ones.
3. Avoid anything with a battery unless they specifically want it.
4. Choose made-to-order over mass stock where you can.
5. Be suspicious of "eco" claims that carry no detail — including ours, if we ever make one.

Common questions

Is your cotton organic?

No. It is ordinary cotton yarn. We would rather say that plainly than imply otherwise.

Is crochet better than machine-knitted fabric?

Not inherently — but crochet cannot be machine-made at all, so every piece is made deliberately and in small numbers. More on that in our guide to crochet.

Can I recycle the packaging?

The box and tissue, yes. Any outer plastic added by the courier, unfortunately not.

What happens to pieces that do not sell?

Very little is made speculatively, so there is almost nothing unsold. What there is gets listed at a discount rather than discarded.

More about how we work on the about page.