Our Commitment 2
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Our Values & Commitments

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BEYOND SERVING OUR CLIENTS, OUR MISSION INCLUDES IMPROVING THE WORLD AROUND US BY SPREADING HAPPINESS, EMPOWERING LEADERS, REGENERATING THE ENVIRONMENT, AND CELEBRATING THE HUMAN SPIRIT!

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OUR BUSINESS PHILOSOPHY

Beautiful designs, meticulous craftsmanship, responsive service, integrity — these are foundational elements of Eclipse Awards. Yet equally important is how we care for the environment and how we give back to people and the communities we belong to.

We are 25 years into a journey of producing beautiful things and creating value for our clients, while also making decisions that respect and regenerate the environment, use resources efficiently, and treat people well. We approach challenges with creativity and collaboration, and we strive for simplicity in our designs and processes.

Beyond sustainability, the hope of revitalizing communities and regenerating nature is what propels us and inspires our commitments. Have a look at some of the things we’re up to in support of those aspirations:

  1. Zero Waste Philosophy

  2. Providing a Plastic-free Experience

  3. Reforestation & Regeneration = 2 Trees for Every Award

  4. Living Wage++ Employer

  5. Green Roofs, a Living Building, and Happy People 

  6. Green Energy and Rooftop Solar Panels

  7. Climate Leadership

  8. Community Partner Program

  9. The Awesome Awards - uplifting awesome everyday people everywhere!

  10. Community Sponsorships and Donations

  11. Volunteerism and Community Service

    1. David Suzuki Foundation - Sustainable Diversity Network

    2. Wild Bird Trust

    3. Strathcona BIA - Building a Green Community

    4. Common Good - Local Economy Fellow

ZERO WASTE PHILOSOPHY

We approach business with a mindset of creating as much beauty and value as possible, while also conserving and minimizing our use of resources. Some might call it a zero waste approach, though we think it’s just common sense. Operationally, we reuse and repurpose packing materials, we recycle all paper and worn out electronics, we compost the organics from our lunchroom and kitchen, we monitor our water and energy usage, and avoid plastics and toxic chemicals wherever possible. 

We apply zero waste thinking to our production and design processes as well, which means we take the same approach when designing and creating new styles of awards and trophies. In fact, you’ll find some of Eclipse Awards’ exclusive eco-friendly green awards featured on pages 46-47 of Canada’s National Zero Waste Council’s Design Portfolio (pdf).  

PROVIDING A PLASTIC FREE EXPERIENCE

In 2023, in support of the UN’s Global Biodiversity Framework, we declared war on plastics and are actively working towards eliminating all plastics from our awards and operations, to provide you with a plastic free experience. This means we won’t supply any plastic, acrylic or lucite awards and trophies. It also means we’ve removed all plastic bags and wrappers from our operations and we’re working with our suppliers to have them remove plastics as well. In the meantime, you may see some things like styrofoam packing peanuts in some orders because we do repurpose these when we receive them ourselves. 

Though all of our awards and trophies are made with sustainability in mind, we have developed a few that are particularly eco-friendly which we identify as Green+++. 

Our aim to become plastic free is a work in progress, and we’re not totally there yet, but we will get there. To learn more, visit our plastic-free blog post and follow us on social media @eclipseawards where we’ll share our progress!

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REFORESTATION & REGENERATION = 2 TREES FOR EVERY AWARD

Since our sustainability journey began in 2008, we’ve continually focussed on minimizing our environmental footprint. In that time we’ve realized that beyond conservation, we also have a responsibility to regenerate, renew, and regrow our natural world. 

So we committed to planting 2 trees for every plaque, trophy and award that we make, and we partnered with Eden Reforestation Projects to help us. We chose Eden because they not only propagate and plant trees, they also protect them through to maturity, and in the process create meaningful employment in rural and impoverished communities.

As of March 2023, we’ve planted over 57,000 mangrove trees and created nearly 600 days of employment! That’s nearly 6 hectares of mangrove forests, which will capture roughly 738 tonnes of CO2 per year, year after year, and there are more to come!

Each mangrove tree becomes part of a new forest, helping to regenerate the environment for years to come by cultivating biodiversity, sequestering carbon, providing food (agroforestry) and habitat, cleaning the air, preventing erosion and soil degradation, while also creating employment that helps strengthen families in rural communities. 

Key points of our tree planting partnership with Eden Reforestation:

- mangrove trees are planted in Nepal, Madagascar, Haiti and Ethiopia
- planting 100 trees creates one day of employment
- one mangrove tree captures approximately 12.3 kgs of CO2 a year, or roughly 308 kgs of CO2 over a 25 year lifespan
- Mangroves “sequester carbon at a rate of 2 to 4 times greater than mature tropical forests and contain “the highest carbon density of all terrestrial ecosystems” (Fatoyinbo et al, 2017)
- one hectare of mature mangrove forest, approximately 10,000 trees, sinks approximately 123 tones of CO2 per year. One hectare is 100 meters by 100 meters, approximately the size of a football field. 
- click here to learn more about the carbon sequestration of mangrove trees.
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LIVING WAGE++ EMPLOYER

Eclipse Awards has been a Living Wage Employer since 2010, becoming the 8th company in BC to become certified when the program was first launched. This commitment stems from our belief that our people are the most important part of Eclipse Awards; in fact, they are Eclipse Awards. Our team works hard to ensure that we perform at the level we do, and in return we try to recognize their efforts as best we can. In 2022, Eclipse Awards became the first Living Wage++ Employer, tying all staff to the Living Wage, not just the most junior staff.

What is a Living Wage?
A Living Wage is different from the minimum wage, which is a minimum legislated by the government.  A Living Wage reflects a higher standard that people need to support their families based on the actual costs of living, and is determined by an independent 3rd party that measures and calculates the true cost of living. 

What does this mean to you, our customers?
Most people appreciate that we care for our team. Some worry that higher wages will drive up costs, however, we have found the opposite to be true. Sustainability starts with people, and these are some of the great things that happen when you recognize and appreciate your team with a living wage:

  1.  Happy people do beautiful work
  2.  We attract great people to our team
  3. Staff that feel appreciated and engaged stay with us, providing consistency and continuity
  4. We develop people’s skills over time and they become experts, we don’t have a fresh team made up of summer students every year
  5. Our staff are dedicated to their work, which means delivering you a 5-star experience.

The value of Eclipse Awards as your partner depends on the skills and talents of our staff. Our performance shows in the quality of the awards we produce, the responsiveness of our customer service. 

With our Living Wage commitment, you can be sure that we are focussed on providing you with the best value and customer experience in the awards industry!

GREEN ROOFS, A LIVING BUILDING & HAPPY PEOPLE

Over the past 20 years we’ve built over 4000 sq.ft. of green roofs and community gardens. Today, our studio is lit by natural sunlight, so we don’t even turn on the lights for 8 months of the year. Our workplace is cooled by passive wind design, which includes a large opening garage door on the 2nd floor and opening skylights to create windflow and a cool breeze during summer months. We want our workplace to be inspiring, healthy, and energy efficient to help elevate our work of uplifting and celebrating people!

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GREEN ENERGY & ROOFTOP SOLAR PANELS

Eclipse Awards has been powered by renewable green energy since 2004 - first via BC Hydro’s Green Power Certificates, then via Bullfrog Power since 2009. Over the years, we continually review our manufacturing processes and take active steps to conserve and reduce our energy use, then we secure green energy sources for the remaining electricity and natural gas that we consume. In 2019 we installed a 2.56 kW photovoltaic solar panel system on our rooftop, which generates clean solar energy to power our operations, including our laser engraver, UV printer and sandblasting equipment. Any excess power that we produce is fed back into the grid.

Click here for a real-time view of the energy produced by our rooftop solar panels and to learn more about our journey to becoming solar powered.

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CLIMATE LEADERSHIP

Eclipse Awards has been ClimateSmart Certified seven times and carbon neutral since 2012. This means that we have taken an in-depth inventory of our company and we understand how greenhouse gasses (GHG) are produced by our operations, including input materials, production, heating and lighting our building, staff commuting, and shipping the awards to you. We use this knowledge and awareness to reduce and limit our emissions, which includes designing eco-friendly wooden awards and trophies with low carbon footprints. Then we plant mangrove trees that absorb carbon to cancel or offset our remaining emissions.

To encourage low carbon commuting, Eclipse Awards subsidizes staff  transit passes while also providing incentives of $.40/km for staff who walk to work and $.20/km for those who choose to bike to work.

It’s not a perfect system, but we’re doing our best to head in the right direction, so that when you choose us as your partner, you can know we’re taking these things into consideration.