Blog

Juniper are corporate sponsors of an amazing charity called Tree Aid: the charity works to tackle climate change and poverty. We would like to share their latest appeal  and urge anyone looking for a charity to support to get involved.

The climate crisis is here, and it is devastating land, lives, and futures. But there is still hope. A green revolution is underway. Across Africa's drylands, ordinary people are working hard to restore land, grow trees and protect futures. Yet they can’t do it alone. It takes all of us to tackle the climate crisis. We support Tree Aid to support people and protect the environment. Please donate to their Climate Champions Appeal today:   https://www.treeaid.org/climate-champions/?donation

Juniper’s mission is to be the leading UK supplier of notebooks and other corporate promotional merchandise, with a highly regarded specialism in sustainable material options. We aim to create “meaningful merchandise” that promotes recycled and recyclable materials and be an industry leader in proving that corporate gifting can be part of the marketing mix in the future. Juniper wants to be part of the solution and not the problem.

Having been ISO 14001 compliant for Environmental Management for the past 11years  we have focused this year on measuring our carbon footprint and creating a carbon reduction strategy to lead us through the next 10 years and beyond to achieve a Net Zero Target.

We have started with a base year of 2022 and published our first Carbon Reduction Plan. We aim for Net Zero by 2050, with Carbon Neutrality for our Scope 1 & 2 emissions from our base year onwards. Carbon reduction is key and this will involve a structured programme of reduction throughout all of our activities. Only by involving all of our stake holders will we be able to achieve this.

We are proud to publish our first Carbon Reduction Plan and would like to thank Enistic for their support and help in gaining PPN 06/21 compliance.

We are delighted to have supported Cornish Seaweed Farming Innovation in Cornwall, farming seaweed for carbon removal and projects aligned to creating bio packaging and bio - alterniatve fuels.

As well as helping to protect the Peatland of the Rimba Raya, protecting highly endangered ecosystems and protecting the carbon rich peatland forest.

Juniper launch Porto, a high quality rPET based material with a smooth texture ideal for deboss, foil blocked or digitally printed branding. The perfect eco alternative to tradintional PU products. We are stocking a range of bestsellers from notebook, cardcases, travel accessories and key fobs in black, navy, red and white, all on a 1 week lead time. 

Porto is 80% recycled waste plastic bottles and has a plant based cellulose core.

In addition to the stock range we make to order in a total of 12 colours.

We make our notebooks in the UK and you can mix and match your accessories for a bespoke combination unique to your barnd or campaign. We use recycled card in the cover and our paper is 100% recycled form post consumer waste. Our electricity is 100% renewable. Our Porto range offers a high quality Eco concious gift that will be useful and long lasting, offering you the maximium brand impression without a huge environmantal impact.

Maintaining our overall wellness has become more significant within our lives today. Journals have proved to be a powerful tool to help individuals navigate their journey towards personal wellbeing. Our Wellness Journals offer self-reflection, goal setting and more useful pages beneficial to help note down your mental, emotional, and physical health.

Acknowledging your emotions and being open when writing in your journal allows you to be genuine and honest to self-reflection and personal growth. Setting time each day or week to dedicate writing in your Wellness Journal will motivate you.

We are delighted to have collaborated with Karin Blak to develop these journals so that we could help prioritise physical and mental wellbeing for a happier and healthier life.

Firstly, let’s look at the exterior and interior of the Wellness Journal!

For the exterior you can choose from over 80 colours be it our vegan Belluno or Torino or our recycled and recyclable Cafeco. Mix or match your elastic and ribbon colours for a bespoke look to suit your brand.

The interior  96 pages, 192 sides of 80gsm white recycled paper, there is a personal details page followed by Wellness foreword written by Karin Blak. 

There are pages for Self Reflection as well as daily planner pages.

To the rear of teh book there are 16 sides of dot grid pages, 17 Plain Pages. The book is sewn bound for a perfect 180 degree lie flat finish.

Why not tip in a few pages to the front of the book with your companies Wellness Initiatives, we can add 1-4 sides of full colour informaion.

How will the Journal help with Wellbeing.

In our Wellness Journal we have 4 topic sections that encourage emotional wellness and balance between work and home life.

1.       A Balanced Life: The expectation that your personal life shouldn’t interfere with work. Employers accept the importance of your personal life, though it can be tricky to create a balance as life and work unintentionally begin to blend together.
2.       Managing emotions at work: Its normal to notice an emotion and not really know why it is here or where it came from. Emotions are constantly passing through, sometimes changing from one second to the next.
3.       Noticing Burnout: Everyone can at times experience stress. Positive stress can push you a little further than you have been pushed before. Negative stress will exhaust you and you will feel overwhelmed. This is a sign that you are being pushed too far, you have too much to manage.
4.       How to make work a pleasure: If work is a pleasure most of the time, then you will be happy most of the time. There are many ways towards making work pleasurable and uplifting.

A perfect gift for your employees to help them with their work life balance and stress levels.

Juniper Visit to see Eleather’s new Production Facility in Peterborough

Susanne and Andrew Langley, Joint MD’s of Juniper, recently visited ELeather and were shown around the new and very impressive Peterborough production facility, by ELeather Director Alexandra Bennett, to see first-hand the production of their new material ranges.

ELeather is an award-winning supplier of sustainable leather alternatives, producing material for clients ranging from airlines to major sports footwear brands, as well as Juniper, who partner with ELeather in the UK manufacture and supply of corporate merchandise.

Leather wastage and scrap, destined for landfill is repurposed but done so in an energy efficient, clean process, and results in a beautiful material, that has the look and feel of leather and crucially uses far less man-made resources than other leather alternatives. Combined with UK product manufacture this offers substantial sustainability credentials over imported plastic alternatives.

Juniper will be launching over 10 new products made from ELeather at the Merchandise World Exhibition in September and Andrew Langley commenting on his visit said,

“ELeather continues to lead the way in creating fantastic solutions for materials that we can make into quality long lasting, and useful merchandise. Brands want to know more and more about the providence of the materials used, their sustainable credentials, whilst providing gifting that they know will be cherished, and last. We at Juniper are delighted to continue our excellent relationship with ELeather.”

Juniper are passionate about our planet and want to ensure we minimise the negative impact of our products on the environment both locally and globally. 

We are continually seeking to source materials and design products that are ecologically sound. We aim to give a sustainable choice of products and we are developing our skills and capabilities in the UK to produce the vast majority of the products we supply here using our own crafts people.

We are excited to launch our new Como range in a unique material that is recycled from waste plastic bottles. The base of the material is rPET, made by taking old plastic bottles that would normally go to landfill and recycling them to form a new tactile soft flexible material. The type of plastic used is polyethylene tetraphene (PET), one of the most used plastics in packaging and clothing. For example, most milk bottles are made from PET. It is popular because it can be easily moulded but retains its strength and durability. This is part of the problem, this durability means that plastic bottles and food containers form a large part of the mountains of plastic waste all over the world.

If not recycled, these bottles could take 700 years to break down. The Como range takes these plastic bottles and food cartons, and by chopping them up and melting them down the active ingredient can be reclaimed. This is then combined with a cellulose fibre to create a soft pliable material that can be crafted into a variety of products.

The process of reclaiming the PET uses 50% less energy than making the material from scratch and prevents the plastic bottle from ending up in landfill. In addition, it prevents the extraction of more crude materials as old ones are being recycled. Thus, rather than extracting more, we are making use of a waste product that the world has an abundance of.

The COMO material has a subtle grain, soft and tactile to touch, that is nothing like the plastic bottle it originated from. You would never know that this soft touch material has such humble beginning. Cesca then craft it into beautiful notebooks, travel accessories and gifts to be loved for many years to come. The range is available in five colours: Raspberry, Blue, White, Black and Red.

Our Como notebook is one of the most sustainable products from the range. It is casebound with a hard cover for a high-quality finish. The lined white paper which is 100 % recycled from waste that would normally go to landfill. The card in its cover is recycled, combined with the Como recycled outer cover. The pages are sewn bound which means that the book lies completely flat for the perfect writing surface. This also minimises use of any glues and means that at the end of life, the whole paper book block can be pulled form the cover and recycled by either shredding or adding directly into your paper recycling. Any waste from cutting out the notebook covers is used to make small items such as cardcases and key fobs meaning that we minimise any waste for the manufacturing process.

Our notebooks is made in the UK. We make most of our products in the UK, not only to minimise the air miles the goods travel but also because we are passionate about continuing the use of traditional skills from UK. We want to maintain and develop skills that have been developed for generations in Northamptonshire through the shoe trade and hope to be able to pass these skills on to the generations to come.

By choosing a product from our Como range not only will you have helped to recycle the planets mountain of plastic waste, but also helped to support British jobs and skills. Your notebook, cardcase or key fob which originated from that plastic waste mountain can live on to be used and loved for many years to come.