This is the bullshit section for many companies out there. Not for us. At Hartmud sustainability is not a greenwashing issue. It is our DNA carved in stoneware.

When I was studying economics in the early 2000s I participated in a project group called OIKOS, looking at the ecological side of economics, and one day I was assigned the task to write a definition of the term „sustainability“ for their homepage – a term you can bet that 20 years ago was on no corporate agenda, nowhere.

In fact at that time literature on the topic was still quite scarce, and the internet yielded only a tiny fraction of the information available today. I researched and reflected and found a definition of sustainability that circled the idea about maximising value and minimising bad spillover for future generations. Creating lasting value without having our grand children paying the price for that value.

Today sustainability is among the first and most prominent sections on every corporate homepage, as it has become compulsory mainstream and often though remains highly absurd. How can a company that produces plastics or chemicals ever be truly sustainable? 
When I found my non-academic vocation and became a potter ten years ago I wouldn’t first recognise or be aware for years that our professional lineage fabricates one of the most sustainable products in the world.

How is a sustainable product defined? One aspect is the use of materials and energy you use when fabricating a product. It might play a role how far and by which means the materials and components have traveled before you can assemble or build them. But the most important aspect in my opinion is the time of use that defines how sustainable a product is. Hence we will see and learn only in the future whether it is really as sustainable an act to buy an electric car, if we can still use it in fifty or a hundred years and how to dispose of the toxic elements of electric car batteries. 
What is a sure thing is that due to the very high firing stoneware is among the hardest and long living products you will encounter in your life. In fact archeological findings reveal stoneware items that date 2500 B.C – and you can still use them! Products that are over 4000 years old! Do you reckon what 4000 years mean? Whole civilisations come and go within these timeframes.

Hartmud studio builds small batches and limited numbers of German made sustainable stoneware items that not only your children and grand children may continue to use, but generations in a far future as well, easily and directly, without electricity or complicated maintenance. In the end it is a cup to drink, a product our species will always need, maybe even for coffee if all goes well.

That is why we like to call our stoneware the most sustainable product we know.