Sustainability and Dille & Kamille
Since Dille & Kamille was founded in 1974 by Freek Kamerling, sustainability has been one of our core values. Our great company was set up in response to the escalating throw-away society which was increasingly defining the retail industry. Freek wanted Dille & Kamille to be a dissenting voice. ‘Natural simplicity’ was the name he gave to his philosophy: simplicity in its products, taking nature as its inspiration.
Less waste, no plastic, away with our hectic, hurried lives – replacing them with purposeful lives, led in simplicity and harmony. This has become our core concept. The essence of our philosophy is that our stores contribute to a world in which people live in harmony – with nature and with each other.
Sustainability report Dille & Kamille
Even though sustainability has been important to Dille & Kamille from the very beginning, we started looking at it very critically in the last two years. At its heart, retail is simply about selling products, something which cannot ever be completely sustainable. Borrowing or buying second-hand is more sustainable, but if you do decide to buy something ‘new’, we want to be the best place to do that. You buy something at Dille & Kamille that will last for a long time and, as a customer, you can be assured that the most sustainable decisions have always been made in every area, from the way in which a product is made to how it is transported. We carried out a study to document our impact on people and the environment. We embraced and translated its results and now we are looking at ways of improving our performance in each category. You can read the details and results in this report.
My personal motto is: ‘Good can always be improved’. If you do something well, you are only satisfied with it if you can reflect on it and see that nothing about it can be improved – only then is it good enough. Our team and our partners will continue to build our world in harmony. I am full of confidence about the time to come.’
Hans Geels - Chief Executive Officer (CEO)
