Our Charitable and Environmental Missions

OUR TWIN MISSIONS

Ours is a Distinct Business Model with a Charitable Mission

This country will not be a good place for any of us to live in
if it is not a reasonably good place for all of us to live in.
- Theodore Roosevelt, 1912

A significant factor in the development of our business model was my history of service in the not-for-profit sector. Over the years, I observed firsthand how great thoughts, oaths and mottos could positively affect people and their actions. And yes, it is my hope the thoughts our carvings convey can positively affect the world in which we live, but that is not enough. As businesses and as individuals, I believe we must seek to actively engage.

For this reason, you will note each carving has been assigned to a specific Charitable Category. For example, our Home Sweet Home Carving is assigned to the Food, Shelter and Hope Charitable Category. Each Home Sweet Home Carving we sell through our website will therefore generate a contribution from us to a related, and properly recognized and vetted, Food, Shelter and Hope charity. Other charitable categories include Education, Environment, Cancer Research, Veteran’s Programs and more. So, while we make the specific charitable decisions internally (based on financials, impact, and other ratings of charities), through their purchases, our customers determine the direction and proportion of our charitable giving.

A Mission of Environmental Consideration

Each generation takes the earth as trustees.
- J. Sterling Morton, Arbor Day Founder, 1872

Wood products are usually considered “green” because they are made from what is widely recognized to be a renewable resource, our forests. However, with a woodcarving recently found in Europe dating back more than 6,000 years, it is easy to see how it is really the longevity of our products that makes them green. Our Wisdom In Wood carvings should be exceptionally long lived and have been crafted in the specific hope they will pass as valued heirlooms from generation to generation.

While we are always seeking ways to improve, here are some of our present environmental considerations:

• We source our rough wood stock locally and use no rare, endangered, exotic or rainforest woods.
• Once in the shop, efforts continue to utilize the wood efficiently and to minimize waste. (Even the remaining sawdust is ultimately put to use as bedding for livestock.)
• Minimizing transportation distances helps to reduce our carbon footprint, so we actively seek local vendors for our production and other purchasing needs.
• Our packaging was designed expressly to avoid the “box in a box” shipping format in predominant use today. Our single box serves as both shipping container and product package. However, our first mission was to design a box that protected our carvings well. Damaged shipments are wasteful in so many ways and certainly do not enhance the customer experience.
• Tested and approved by our shipper, our carvings box is made from 100% recyclable corrugated cardboard, but is also reusable for storage of our seasonal carvings. The interior protective foam is also reusable and is fully recyclable as #4 LDPE.
• Our optional Base Plinth was designed to ship in the same box with our carvings, avoiding additional boxing.
• Our shopmark, the brass nameplate inset into the back of our carvings, is sourced from a Malcolm Baldrige award winning family business here in the United States. While we really like the quality of their end product, their environmental record was clean, unlike a number of other vendors we researched. We also found vendors who, while having business operations here, manufactured their products overseas with little or no environmental controls or oversight.

With your Wisdom In Wood carving purchase, you can rest assured we are making every effort to minimize our impact on the environment.