Environment Awards: Manufacturer Of The Best Green Product: Harrison Spinks

How many bed manufacturers, for example, have bought their own wool farm and own timber forest to ensure their raw materials are locally-produced in an eco-friendly way?

Step forward Harrison Spinks, the 170-year-old organisation encompassing three luxury Yorkshire bed companies – Harrison, Somnus and Spink & Edgar.

The firm has transformed its product over recent years to make it as natural, and as environmentally friendly, as possible – and sales have soared as a result.

“We’ve been going down this path of making the product natural and sourcing locally,” said managing director Simon Spinks. “Three years ago, half the fibres in our mattresses were man-made. Now they’re all 100 per cent natural.

“If you think about it, bed mattresses always used to be very environmentally-friendly products made of natural materials. But somewhere since about 1950 they turned into something else, full of polyester and foam. We have tried to turn the clock back.”

The carbon footprint of each bed has been transformed by the firm’s decision to buy its own sheep farm in Yorkshire to serve its Leeds factory, rather than importing wool 12,000 miles by container ship from Australia and New Zealand.

“It always seemed ironic to me that we were sourcing wool from the other side of the world,” Mr Spinks said. “Taking on our own farm was a radical step, but we are a family business and that does allow you to make decisions that couldn’t necessarily be justified in a business plan.

“In fact our sales are up 50 per cent in the past three years so it has been a success. But it was just an instinct that told us this was right.”

The new arm of the business has certainly livened things up for staff at the business.

“It has made life a lot more interesting!” Mr Spinks said. “We’ve just finished birthing 250 lambs – there are issues to consider now that were just not there before. It is a lot of fun.”

The eco-drive has become all-encompassing for the firm. Each mattress is now covered in a special biodegradable fabric, while springs are contained in a sustainable ecological fibre made from fully renewable sources.

Even the tiny labels on each mattress are 100 per cent natural. The firm plants a tree for each one used and recently bought its own forest. Plans are now being drawn up for the firm to start taking back spent mattresses for recycling. Springs will be removed and turned into steel rods, while the remaining natural materials can be anaerobically digested at the company farm to make green electricity to power the factory.

It is this astonishingly holistic approach that has won Harrison Spinks the Manufacturer of the Best Green Product award, sponsored by Banks Renewables.