Responsibility

Claim

"We take responsibility" sounds good, but it is not easy to live. We are aware that our possibilities are limited and that aspiration and reality are two different aspects that need to be reconciled again and again. Here we would like to be responsible, and become even more so:

Social responsibility

For more than 10 years, Lotus Design has been an inclusive company recognised by the Landschaftsverband Rheinland. This means that at least 30% of our staff are people with so-called severe disabilities. Inclusion has become an integral part of our work and has a significant impact on our working atmosphere and the way we interact with each other. We currently have a total of 3 employees with severe disabilities in the shipping and order processing departments. Over the years, we have come to understand more and more that basically every person is "disabled" in their own way and at the same time perfect in a wonderful way. 

Ecological responsibility

We don't plant trees, drive an e-car or have a sustainability label. But, we do finance a job ticket for our employees, use green electricity in our work processes and strive to avoid waste and use resources sparingly. The fact that we still have yoga mats made of PVC in our product range due to a lack of good alternatives is also a little disconcerting for us at times - what was that about the claim ...? At the same time, we manufacture a large part of our products from natural renewable raw materials and contribute to sustainable management with the almost legendary longevity of our meditation cushions. 

Transparency

Lotus Design has stood for the processing of high-quality materials for over 30 years. We have had a business relationship with some of our fabric suppliers for decades. For example, we source the fabric for our all-time classic, the Basic meditation cushion, from a traditional weaving mill in northern Germany. The fabrics for our organic pillows and our organic yoga cushions come from a renowned fabric manufacturer in southern Germany.

In the summer of this year, we decided to switch the filling of our yoga bolsters and meditation cushions completely to certified organic quality. Our organic spelt husks come from the Swabian Alb and our organic buckwheat husks from Austria and neighbouring Eastern European countries. For many years now, we have been getting our yoga blocks made of natural cork from a business partner in Portugal who stands for sustainable cork production.

In the early years of Lotus Design, we still sewed our meditation cushions ourselves. The increasing demand soon pushed us to our limits. Since the mid-nineties, we have been cooperating with recognised workshops for people with disabilities in North Rhine-Westphalia. Many of our products are made up for us there. Our meditation benches are made for us in a workshop with a social background.  

However, even we cannot do without imports from the Far East. We have had part of our range of meditation cushions and yoga cushions made by a producer in North India for over 10 years. We have visited this company several times and had the opportunity to see the working conditions on site. In the meantime, we have a friendly relationship with the owner. We source part of our yoga mat range from two other producers in Taiwan. However, our yoga mat Studio with ÖkoTex Standard 100 is actually Made in Germany. 

We are happy to supplement the range of our own brand Lotus Design® with high-quality products from other brands in Germany, Switzerland and Sweden.