April 22nd is Earth Day
we honour with our practices
I would like to start with acknowledging that we have built the Alinker company while living and working on the Unceded territories of all Indigenous Nations of Turtle Island. This land matters, and the people who tended to the land for centuries matter. We acknowledge that we live on this Unceded land as uninvited visitors. We honour Indigenous people and their values and this land by using our business as a medium to raise awareness, speak our truths, feel the unbearable injustice that was done, create communities based on deep values of respect and generosity, protect the wisdom of elders, hire Indigenous people, build bridges, promote Indigenous entrepreneurs and their businesses and do our own inner work to understand and acknowledge who we represent, choose who we are beyond what we represent by our looks so we can build bridges toward a world for and by us all, in community for the next 7 generations.
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This is an Alinker SPECIAL for Earth Day 2021 - voting is open for #MoMadness, Launching an audacious Alinker Cradle to Cradle project, we plant trees - through our partner Treesisters, and we launched a new collective campaign, the Mother of all Campaigns!
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Polls close this Saturday,
April 24th at 9PM ET.
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Takes a second!
Please vote for Alinker
in these quarter finals
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We teased you on Facebook with the photo on the left, and asked what this container on the Alinker Family Farm is going to be... you commented 45 times and gave many creative answers, some were close, but none of you nailed it.
Here is what this container is going to be an essential part of!
Launching Alinker Buy-Back, Swap-Renew
our Cradle2Cradle circular approach - C2C
We manufacture Alinkers and they get out there in the world, thousands of them. And that is cool, changing lives and giving people more range and independence. But, the process of manufacturing aluminum frames, rubber tires, metal parts and international shipping is not a process that has a small footprint on this earth. We are well aware and build and improve our supply chain to minimize the negative impact.
We manufacture in a mindful way, making sure that everybody in the supply chain is treated well, factories have air and water treatment facilities, use minimal amounts of plastic, use recycled materials for our packaging, and partnered with Treesisters.org to employ women in the lungs of the earth, to plant trees. We have planted 7 trees per Alinker so far. See calculation
But the process is not complete. With thousands of Alinkers out in the world, what happens with them when people are no longer able to use them? We like to complete the cycle of manufacturing to end of life of the product with our audacious Alinker C2C launch!
“Cradle to cradle can be defined as the design and production of products of all types in such a way that at the end of their life, they can be truly recycled. Technical materials that stay in closed-loop technical cycles. It could be argued that cradle to cradle is equivalent to true sustainability – through the technical components used, all products become sustainable as nothing becomes waste which cannot be reused”. Quoted
We launch this project in the full awareness that for now we aim for the full Cradle to Cradle cycle, but we need to build and experiment with it, to see what is possible, see what kind of volumes we are looking at, and at what costs / benefits.
So, this is our initial plan, and we will adjust and tweak as we go and keep you informed:
Alinker C2C
We are starting in the US (and for US customers only at this point) on our Alinker Family Farm in Kentucky where we have the initial workshop and storage space for returned Alinkers and where we can build the capacity for refurbishing, recycling, repurposing and local employment.
We offer 2 options:
1/. Buy back +
We give you $200 cash for your Alinker and we cover shipping back to the farm (you pack it)
You contribute, and we pay for a complete ‘Cradle2Cradle’ cycle, whereby Alinkers are either:
Re-furbished - then used for farm visitors or donated
Re-cycled - usable parts are reused, some parts are recycled
Up-cycled - usable parts are reused
Re-purposed - parts are redesigned for different purposes
Re-destined - parts of the frame are used to create new products
This approach contributes to:
- Employment of more Alinker users
- More than carbon neutral operations – we will plant 2 more trees for each Alinker returned
- Engagement with designers for repurposing parts
- A line of new Alinker products from repurposing parts
- No landfill
- Awareness about practices that lead to a healthier planetA
*If your Alinker is rather new and you want more cash for it, you can always sell it online.
2/. Swap and renew +
You live in the USA and had your Alinker for more than 5 years, you can ship it back (to the Alinker Family Farm) and pay shipping. We will sell you a brand new Alinker for half the price. We refurbish – recycle etc. your returned Alinker, as all mentioned above. This is only for original buyers of NEW Alinkers in the USA, and you need the date of warranty registration or invoice.
I know right? We keep adding benefits to the Alinker!
Together we move differently
If you are interested in the buy back+ or swap and renew+ options,
send us an email
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Treesisters employs women to plant trees
Making restoration the new normal
TreeSisters is a UK registered social change and reforestation charity that places tropical forest restoration into everyone’s hands. Through individuals and businesses that give back to Nature every month, TreeSisters has so far funded the planting of over 16 million trees across 12 locations in Brazil, Borneo, Cameroon, India, Kenya, Mozambique, Madagascar, Nepal and West Papua.
We are actively encouraging the cultural shift required to grow from a consumer to a restorative culture. We encourage feminine leadership by providing resources, experiences and communities that inspire personal and collective action on behalf of the trees.
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Alinker plants trees, 7 per Alinker ever made! We already planted some 36,565 of those 16.7 million! We have an active tree planting campaign where you can read a lot more about how we calculate our carbon footprint, and how we are already carbon neutral.
Use this campaign to plant some trees on this very precious Earth Day
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BE's hive
Launching the Mother of all Campaigns
the one that feeds all
We just launched our third collective campaign, these are the collective campaigns that allow for larger donations and sponsors. These campaigns are supporting the individual campaigns, 171 campaigns completed to date! Imagine!
People who do a campaign often live at the receiving end of the 'sickcare' system that drives people into poverty. When you don't experience this, you don't even know this is happening to people, so the people who do their campaigns are in fact generous enough to share what it is like. In return we can collectively show up and make sure they get their own Alinker. Read their stories!
These are ways to get involved
You can START your own campaign today
You can SPONSOR this mother campaign (send an email)
You can DONATE to one of the individual campaigns
Click here or on the photo to go to the campaign
and read all about the impact and the joy you can be part of
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