To further its environmental commitment on Earth Day and year-round, fine jewelry brand Bario Neal has introduced new packaging made with materials that give clients elegance and sustainability with every unboxing.
“Our intention with the packaging redesign was to gift our customers elevated, multifunctional packaging that they would never want to throw away. We don’t want to put objects out into the world that are eventually going to end up in landfills,” says Page Neal, who cofounded the company with Anna Bario in 2008.
“At Bario Neal, sustainability isn’t just a once-a-year event—it’s a daily commitment,” Neal says. “Our mission is to make jewelry of lasting value that has a positive impact on people and the planet. This extends beyond just material sourcing and into how we make the jewelry, the quality of our jewelry, and our company values of transparency, inclusivity, and gender equality.
“Essentially, we want to hold the brand to the same standards of coexistence that we strive to uphold in our own lives,” she adds.
Bario Neal’s complimentary jewelry and ring box is made with 100% recycled paper and recyclable chipboard. For an additional charge, the brand offers wooden and porcelain jewelry boxes for gifting or storing its jewelry. The porcelain boxes ($45 with jewelry purchase) are crafted by small-scale ceramicists in Vermont, and the wood ones ($25)—which can hold up to four pieces of jewelry—are made with sustainably sourced recycled pine and finished with an all-natural black stain.
Any of these individual boxes can be contained in Bario Neal’s new complimentary gift box, which is made with heavyweight chipboard and wrapped with Bario Neal branded art paper. Even the brochure included with every Bario Neal order—which outlines the brand’s ethics and suggestions for jewelry care—is made with 100% recycled paper.
Bario Neal also redesigned its shopping bags and shipping boxes so they’re completely recyclable. Shopping bags are durable white kraft paper with paper handles, and shipping boxes are made with corrugated board and wrapped with kraft paper.
For Earth Day, Bario Neal held a permanent jewelry pop-up in conjunction with afternoon tea at Philadelphia’s historic Rittenhouse hotel on Saturday. The brand also offered free consultation and cleaning for heirloom jewelry at its stores in Philadelphia and Brooklyn over the weekend.
As for what’s next, Neal says she and Bario are preparing their annual sustainability report and working on expanding their resale business, sales of Fairmined gold, and use of directly sourced and women-mined gemstones. While some jewelry companies have just introduced environmental initiatives, Bario Neal chose this path from the start, and Neal says she’d like to see the jewelry industry be a leader in sustainability within the fashion world.
“We start every partnership with potential suppliers as an introductory conversation to learn about where their materials are from, how they’re extracted from the earth, who they employ, and how their staff is paid, where their materials are processed,” Neal explains.
“We ask for supporting evidence to back their answers. And if we don’t know where a material comes from, we simply do not use it. Also, if we can improve a process of ours, we better it,” she says. “Being leaders and pioneers in this work, we must continuously improve so that other industries can follow suit and see what’s possible.”
Top: Bario Neal’s shopping bags, gift boxes, and shipping packages are made with recyclable and sustainable materials. (Photos courtesy of Bario Neal)
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