Bring Home A
Piece Of Africa
Our living spaces deserve furnishings with a soul, a story, and a purpose. We work hard to ensure that at every step in the journey of our products, we are contributing to sustaining the African environment and positively impacting Ghanaian communities.
Rattan For Rainforests
Rattan needs the rainforest to thrive. Our rattan is a natural raw material, sourced in the rainforests of the Cape Coast in Ghana. It grows very quickly and is harvested by hand by the local farmers. The cultivation of rattan has the added benefit of delaying deforestation in these areas. Rattan has become a valuable material and so deforestation has been stopped to allow rattan growth. One of the natural attributes of the rattan plant is to form a symbiosis with the surrounding trees. Ensuring we only use materials that grow in abundance in Ghana means that we can provide you with the most sustainably made products which are also bio-degradable.
When it comes to rattan waste minimization, we use every part of the cane. The inside body is used for structure and the skin to wrap and bind the furnishings.
Dyed By
Nature
Our Elephant Grass products are made using only woven elephant grass and leather. Sometimes we dye the grass in order to get a more elaborate design. This technique and tradition comes from Bolgatanga in Ghana and is called 'Bolga Baskets'. The simple dyeing process involves dipping the Elephant Grass strands in fabric dyes and boiling it in water. Different methods are used in preparing the straw for dyeing. Some wrap small amounts of twisted or untwisted straw into rings whilst others tie together large bundles. A pot of water is brought to the boil and the dye is added. The dyes used are the natural basic vat dyes, commonly used for dyeing cotton cloth.
Responsibility To Our Planet
Our aim is to keep our carbon footprint as small as your babies footprint. The raw rattan we use is sourced an hour away from our artisans in Accra and our containers are shipped from Tema, which is also an less than than an hour from our warehouse. We have worked hard with our shipping company to operate what they call 'green shipping' which means no part-shipping and only placing our containers on ships that are already making the journey to the UK. We ship our products directly from our artisans to our warehouse in the UK. By shipping direct, we are not only able to reduce the time in transit but also the size our carbon footprint.
We Say No To Plastic
One of the reasons we started Chika & Co. was because we were tired of everything baby related being made from ugly and harmful plastic. Now, we want to champion all things natural and eco-friendly. Our little ones are delicate and so there are no toxic dyes, paints or harmful chemicals used in our products.
Even our packaging is recycled. We use recycled cardboard for shipping and we bio wrap our larger products. We are also working towards a paperless system, all receipts will be emailed and all correspondence will be done electronically. We use absolutely no plastic whatsoever. We ship completely plastic-free at every point of the life-cycle. We use only paper tape, paper/newspaper for cushioning, and our shipping label is printed on recycled paper.
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