Beautiful jewelry is always in style – and so is doing good for the planet.

For Lover’s Tempo, a female-founded-and-led jewelry brand based in Vancouver, sustainability isn’t just an item to be crossed off the to-do list. Instead, the highest standards for social and environmental performance are woven into every aspect of the business.

“Having sustainability at the heart of what we do means that our strategies for growth are not at the cost of important things like the environment and employee well-being,” says Leslie Hoolaeff, co-founder and COO of Lover’s Tempo.

In its latest endeavour, Lover’s Tempo officially achieved B Corp status in February 2023, furthering its commitment to prioritizing doing good for both people and the planet.

The certification process was a three-year investment, but it drew attention to the areas of business that Lover’s Tempo could improve upon to reach the next level of sustainability – while providing tangible targets that the brand could work towards reaching.

To begin, Lover’s Tempo wanted to know where to place its focus to reach the next level of sustainability. So, in 2021, it enlisted the help of Green Sky Consulting to sift through every component of its products’ life cycle, as well as each facet of the business to gain an understanding of its carbon footprint and how to improve. “This included breaking down the materials used in each piece we sell, looking at the way our employees commute to work, measuring how much waste we produce as a business, how our offices are heated and cooled and so much more,” says Hoolaeff. Then it was able to quantify how each business decision made an environmental impact.

The results surprised the brand. “The nature of our products being small made for a lower impact overall than we were expecting,” says Hoolaeff. “But some of our biggest carbon footprint impacts have nothing to do with our product development at all, such as business travel, for example.”

Overall, the brand learned that it was on the right path, but there were still some adjustments to be made, such as how products are developed, and the impact of expanding its product line mindfully. “We made changes to the way we work with our suppliers to improve transparency in our supply chain,” says Hoolaef. “We became certified living-wage employers, found new ways to engage with our employees to ensure their satisfaction in their jobs and restructured our bonus methodology to a profit-sharing model.”

After implementing these changes, in 2022, the brand became a certified carbon neutral business through Carbon Zero, a North American industry leader in greenhouse gas measurement, reduction, and offsetting solutions, leading them closer to achieving B Corp certification.

But reaching B Corp status isn’t the only way the brand maintains its commitment to sustainability. In 2022, Lover’s Tempo forged ties with Eco Drive, a company that helps brands offset their carbon footprint by planting trees. “Partnering with Eco Drive has given us a more transparent system for offsetting the carbon created by the fulfilment of our online orders,” says Hoolaef. Eco Drive offers extensive information about the choices they make in offsetting carbon, and are champions of touting future plans in full transparency.

Also in 2022, Lover’s Tempo created its Full Circle program, which takes into account a product’s end of life. By partnering with local artists, the brand provides them with jewelry that would have otherwise ended up in a landfill – it then gets upcycled into unique art to be auctioned off to support important causes.

“One of the most important factors to consider when trying to be a sustainable business in the fashion industry is the end-of-life plan for your products,” says Hoolaef. “In the world of fashion jewelry, we’re lucky that it’s not very common for pieces to end up in a landfill – pieces are most often donated, repurposed or kept – but to offer an additional incentive to prevent that from happening while also creating beautiful art and raising money for meaningful causes felt like a slam dunk.” Hoolaef calls this initiative one of her proudest moments at Lover’s Tempo.

Finding the right partners for its sustainability mission was integral to Lover’s Tempo. “In the world we live in today where so many supposed ‘environmental’ causes are really just greenwashing, we love partnering with a team that really cares about the substance of what they are doing,” says Hoolaef.

And the efforts are paying off – sustainably. “We’re building a business that is in it for the long-haul to create meaningful job opportunities, purposeful products and a brighter future. This has meant incredible employee retention, business partners who consistently tell us what a delight we are to work with, a 4.8 average star rating from over 6,000 happy customers and steady year over year revenue growth.”