The most sustainable bag is the one you already own. Our work is to make pieces good enough to last, and to fix them when they don't.
The sustainability page on a luxury website tends to be the longest. We have made ours brief, partly out of restraint, and partly because the most honest thing a luxury house can say about sustainability is: buy something good and keep it for thirty years.
That is what we are working on. The pieces we make are intended to outlast their owners. Everything below is a means to that end.
From the day of purchase. Manufacturing defects, all materials, all hardware. See the warranty.
At-cost. Wheels, handles, locks, leather conditioning, brass relacquering — anything.
Aluminum is endlessly recyclable. We will take any Völtz aluminum shell back at end of life and recycle it ourselves.
Cotton dust-bag, kraft box, paper-tape. No plastic. No air pockets. No printed inserts.
The most sustainable bag is the one you already own. Our work is to make pieces good enough to last, and to fix them when they don't.
All our leathers are vegetable-tanned in Tuscany using oak bark and chestnut — the same tanneries that have served Italian saddlemakers for four centuries. We do not use chrome-tanned leather. We do not use synthetic substitutes.
All our shells are aerospace-grade aluminum, anodised in our own facility. Aluminum is endlessly recyclable; we will buy back any Völtz aluminum shell at end of life and recycle it through certified Indian smelters.
All our hardware is solid brass, lacquered by hand in our atelier. No zinc-plate, no chrome-plate, no chrome at all.
Our atelier employs forty-eight people, all of whom we have met. We pay above local industry rate, contribute to PF and ESI, and provide annual paid leave that is roughly twice the legal minimum. We are not certified by any external body, partly because the certification industry is itself a thing we want no part of.
This is what we can say cleanly: we know the people we work with. We pay them well. We treat them as partners. The wage and welfare data is on our annual transparency note, sent free to anyone who asks.
Read the transparency noteWe do not offset. We do not greenwash. We do not have a sustainability committee. We do not publish quarterly impact reports. We do not certify ourselves to standards we have written ourselves.
We make objects. We make them well. We repair them when they fail. We treat the people who make them with respect. That is the entire programme.
— Ajay Singh, Founder