I'm from West Yorkshire. My grandmother worked in the textile mills, back when that was simply what people here did.
Watching that industry drain out of this area over my own lifetime is part of why Bean and Bemble is made the way it is. When I started sketching out product ideas, I was fairly sure there must still be brilliant manufacturers left in Britain. My mum and I sat down and started searching and there are. Some of them are extraordinary.
Thisblog is about who makes our things, what they're made from, and what happens to the waste. I've tried to be specific rather than vague, and honest about the bits we haven't cracked yet.
Why we make in Britain
Shorter supply chains. Our products aren't crossing oceans to reach you. For a UK customer buying a UK-made placemat, that's a genuinely shorter journey than the alternative.
Regulation we can stand behind. UK and EU rules on chemicals, food-contact materials and waste are among the strictest anywhere. Manufacturing here means those standards are the baseline rather than something we have to go looking for.
We can visit. This is the one that matters most day to day. I can pick up the phone to the people who make our coasters. I've stood in the rooms where our cards are printed. When something goes wrong, there's a person to call, not a portal.
It keeps skills alive. Every order placed with a small British manufacturer is a vote for those workshops still being here in ten years. Given what happened to the mills my grandmother worked in, that isn't abstract to me.
None of this makes British-made automatically greener in every respect, a product's footprint is mostly about materials, energy and how long the thing lasts, not just miles travelled. But taken together, it's a way of working we can actually see and verify.
Our melamine range
Our placemats, coasters and serving boards are made in the UK from a sustainably forested eucalyptus board.
The cork backing on our placemats and coasters is sustainably farmed in Portugal, cork is harvested from the bark of living trees, which regrows, so no tree is felled to make it.
What I like most about this manufacturer is what they do with what's left over:
- Offcuts and rejects are used as fuel for a local power station, displacing coal
- Wood dust goes to compost
- The backing paper from the cork is reused as packing material for dispatch
Very little leaves that building as waste. We source materials as close to home as we can throughout.
Our textiles
Our tea towels, aprons and bags come from a UK textile printer who takes this seriously.
The reactive inks they use give us the saturated colour Michelle's designs need, with excellent rub and wash fastness and they conform to Oeko-Tex Standard 100, meaning no harmful substances in the finished fabric. The inks are entirely synthetic: no animal products, no animal testing.
Our 100% cotton comes direct from a BCI-registered mill in Pakistan. I'll be straightforward about this one: it's the furthest-travelled material we use. Cotton isn't grown in Britain, so it has to come from somewhere, and we chose a mill signed up to the Better Cotton Initiative's standards on water use, pesticide reduction and worker welfare. If we find a better option, we'll take it.
During printing, fabrics are washed at up to 70°C to remove preparation solution and unfixed dye. That waste water goes through an effluent plant before returning to public water treatment.
Paper and packaging
Our greeting cards and gift wrap are made by a printer operating a zero-to-landfill site. 95% of their waste is remanufactured into recycled products; the remaining 5% becomes refuse-derived fuel.
Our own packaging:
- Branded belly bands, swing tags and boxes, all made in the UK
- Compostable cellophane sleeves on greeting cards, to protect them from fingerprints. Prefer them without? Just ask and we'll leave them off.
- Recyclable paper and card for all postal packing
- Paper parcel tape rather than plastic
- Plain brown outer packaging. Not as pretty as we'd like, much easier to recycle.
We also reuse our own suppliers' shipping boxes for wholesale and larger orders. So if your parcel turns up looking a bit travel-worn, that's deliberate. The contents will be immaculate.
The bits we haven't solved
I'd rather say this than pretend otherwise.
Sustainable options cost more. Paper tape and paper bubble wrap are considerably more expensive than the plastic equivalents. For a business our size, every one of these choices comes out of a fairly small margin, and there are things we'd like to do that we can't yet afford.
Melamine is hard to recycle. It's a thermoset, it can't be melted down and reformed. Our answer is longevity: a placemat that lasts fifteen years is doing more good than one you replace every other year. But it isn't a complete answer and I won't pretend it is.
Cotton comes from a long way away. As above.
We keep chipping away at these. If you want detail on any specific product or process, get in touch, I'm happy to answer.
Finding other British-made brands
There's a growing number of independent retailers and marketplaces stocking predominantly British-made goods, which is lovely to see.
A note on the first link below: Hope + Story pay us a small commission if you buy through it. We'd recommend them regardless, we stock with them because their ethos matches ours, but you should know that before you click.
Hope + Story, British-made homeware and gifts, including ours. Make It British, a full directory of UK manufacturers and brands, and a genuinely useful resource if you want to find makers in any category.
Buying from small British makers, us or anyone else, keeps money and skills in the country. Thank you for caring where your things come from.
Michelle x
Want to see it in person? Our shop in Hebden Bridge is full of it. Or browse the full collection online.
Trade and wholesale enquiries welcome — see our trade accounts page.
Frequently asked questions
Where are Bean and Bemble products made? The large majority in the UK. Our melamine, textiles, cards, cushions and packaging are all British-made. A small number of items are made elsewhere by carefully chosen partners, our coir doormats, for example, are made in India from natural coconut husk fibre, and we say so on the product page.
Are your products sustainable? We work at it. UK manufacturing, PEFC/FSC-certified board, Oeko-Tex certified inks, BCI cotton, zero-to-landfill printing, plastic-free postal packaging, and manufacturers who fuel local power stations with their offcuts. We're also open about what we haven't solved, see above.
Is your packaging plastic free? Our postal packaging is: recyclable paper and card, paper parcel tape, no plastic bubble wrap. Greeting cards come in compostable cellophane sleeves, and we'll omit those on request.
What is Oeko-Tex Standard 100? An independent certification confirming that a textile has been tested for harmful substances and is safe for human contact.
What is BCI cotton? Cotton from farms working to Better Cotton Initiative standards, covering water use, pesticide reduction, soil health and workers' rights.
Do you take wholesale orders? Yes, we supply independent shops and department stores in the UK and abroad. Apply for a trade account or email us for the printed catalogue and price list.