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Bespoke marble design pieces from the ethical home accessories brand Mater, designed by Todd Bracher, are to be auctioned on Actics.com, to its dedicated ethical community, with all profits going back to producers in India.
American designer Todd Bracher has developed two large scale and extravagant pieces in turned black and white marble. The pieces - a giant candelabra and a champagne cooler - are crafted on site in the Jaipur province of India by a collective of local artisans.
The pieces will be auctioned online in collaboration with Actics, the visionary ethical online community and appraisal tool. Sale profits from the first collection will be fed directly back into sustainable production in India.
Mater has recently collaborated with the Danish Foreign Ministry to launch a long-term sustainable programme at their production sites in Jaipur and Susbiz in India. The programme aims to increase understanding of sustainability and improve working conditions in the province. The limited edition Marble Collection, due to launch in Milan during Milan Design Week is among schemes supported by this programme.
Actics, has recently been chosen to work in partnership with the Copenhagen Climate Change Council’s on-line Community by utilising their pioneering Web 2.0 tool for at least 1000 leading climate/energy scientists, 1000 global corporate CEOs, 1000 investors and several thousand students to commit to climate change. The summit is considered critical in order to achieve ratification of the Kyoto Protocol by 2012.
Nicolai Peitersen, founder and CEO of Actics said: "Actics is about bringing people and organizations that are serious about ethics together. Transparency is a powerful way to bring about real change - a vision we share with Mater. Therefore Actics is delighted to host this innovative and worthwhile auction."
About Actics
Actics (actics.com) is the world’s first online ethical rating tool pioneering the new trend in ethical awareness and environmental and social responsibility.
Actics is also a provider of corporate solutions to live out your values in alignment with your stakeholders. The Actics software can be integrated into your company’s intranet/extranet/website depending on who you wish to involve. Most companies choose to involve the employees and thus activating the values within the organisation as the first step of introducing Actics. When the company has progressed to living the values dynamically, a profile is created in the public community to showcase the company to external stakeholders and involve them in its development.
About Nicolai Peitersen (founder & CEO of Actics)
Nicolai is pioneering the new trend in ethical awareness and social responsibility by combing it with algorithms and web 2.0 software. Nicolai’s ambition with Actics is to create an ethical price index that is more indicative of the real value of companies than the current share price by involving all stakeholders around a company. Nicolai has worked as a Research Economist for the Danish Central Bank and as a Euro Analyst for investment bank JP Morgan Chase, being voted the best global research team by Institutional Investor. A published writer, Nicolai has written and contributed to a multitude of visionary papers, books and reviews on social innovation and monetary economics including the Global Data Watch report for JP Morgan.
Nicolai is an entrepreneurial, social, visionary who is motivated by generating ideas that make a difference to mankind and creating the tools to implement them.
About Mater
Founded in 2006 by Henrik Marstrand and under the creative direction of Thomas Lykke from OeO, Mater - latin for mother - is a Copenhagen-based company with a strong vision to create top quality, timeless and beautiful home accessories based on an ethical business strategy and work methods that support people, local craft traditions and the environment.
Contributing designers include Todd Bracher (US), Aurélien Barbry (FR), Jakob Wagner (DK), Jens Martin Skibsted (DK), Space by Signe Bindslev Henriksen & Peter Bundgaard Rützou (DK), Jesper K. Thomsen (DK) and René & Sách (DK).
Transparency & accountability
Mater's commitment to ethical, sustainable and socially responsible production is in accordance with the principles of the UN voluntary corporate responsibility initiative – the United Nations' Global Compact. Currently producing in India, Vietnam and China all factories and workshops will be audited by a third party Danish team that has been specially trained.
“Our core values for mater are ‘transparency’ and ‘accountability’ which is why we are so open about everything we do; we want to be held accountable and show our progress to everybody” Henrik Marstrand, Mater's founder and CEO.
Mater fundraising
Mater funds social and environmental initiatives carried out in collaboration with audited manufacturers and workshops. Revenues for the projects are generated from the sale of limited-edition mater designs that will be auctioned internationally from spring 2008. Full details can be found of the website.
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