Our Sustainability Journey

This planet is a shared resource, and a shared responsibility. At Otter Products, we’ve taken concrete steps to reduce our environmental impact, enhance our processes, and improve our stewardship. Not because we had to — because it’s the right thing to do.

Our Commitment

As part of our commitment to society, our people and the planet, we leverage EcoVadis, the global leader in business sustainability ratings, to rate our performance and understand where we can improve and make a bigger impact across the world.

The EcoVadis assessment includes 21 sustainability criteria across four core themes: Environment, Labour & Human Rights, Ethics and Sustainable Procurement.

In our latest rating, which was completed in February 2024, Otter Products earned a "Committed" badge which demonstrates our progress towards sustainability.

In house

Our first efforts focused on the area where we have the most control — actions inside our own four walls. After an extensive internal assessment of our practices, we identified and eliminated waste, from the breakroom to the warehouse to the boardroom. For example, our Otter Products distribution centres are now recycling more than 80% of the scrap they produce, diverting 500,000+ pounds from landfills in 2023.

We’ve also made moves to minimise our battery and waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) and packaging footprint across our regions in accordance with EU environmental policy. Otter Products contributes to various recycling compliance schemes and we’re constantly improving our Extended Producer Responsibility. [More information on our compliance schemes partnerships can be found here].

In product

We earned our reputation building reliable, long-lasting phone and tablet accessories that can take a thrashing — without ending up in the bin. Today, roughly 50% of the plastics used in our most popular designs are recycled.

By the end of 2023, we estimate that we will have repurposed more than 4.6 million pounds of recycled content.

And the count keeps growing. Using recycled materials has an added benefit — it cuts carbon emissions by at least 30% of what virgin plastic processing and manufacturing produces¹.

There are many paths to curb our impact, and we had to make a choice: take the trail of composting or the road of recycling? With composting, there’s a short-term benefit of not necessarily adding waste. Yet they require new materials for production and industrial composting to break down. We believe there’s an alternative solution to help reduce pollution. By building phone cases using recycled materials, there’s a long-term impact of pulling existing materials out of the environment, giving them a second life.

In package

What’s inside our recycled phone cases is important. What they ship in is equally significant. That’s why we redesigned our retail packaging to replace nearly all plastic with materials that are fully recyclable and ready for your at-home recycling bin.

How we get our products onto shelves has changed as well — our new packaging takes up a lot less space on a shipping pallet. That lets us stack more phone cases, screen protectors, chargers and cable products into each load, which reduces delivery emissions.

On the horizon

There is no single end goal for making sustainable phone cases, no number we’re trying to hit because there are always ways to improve. And that’s our focus — continually questioning how we can build smarter, run leaner and be a greener brand. For us and for you.

¹https://stanfordmag.org/contents/the-link-between-plastic-use-and-climate-change-nitty-gritty