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A Community of Animal Lovers

Being animal lovers we care. We care about stray kittens and puppies. We care that nothing with the words “animal by-products get within 100 feet of our pets. We care that when our pets get sick we find doctors that treat them with supplements vs. chemicals. We care about our community and the work that organizations like the Spay-Neuter Assistance Program (SNAP) do. We care and want to give back what we can when we can for as long as we can.

An Environmental Community

Leifers dog and cat houses are made out of plastic and coated with a no- or low-VOC designer paint that gives it the special look and feel.

Whoa! How can that be “environmental?”

The fact is, manufacturing and shipping anything means we leave the inevitable carbon pawprint. We’ve explored a lot of options -- none of them are pristine. And in the end, all products must be disposed of or recycled.

We made some prototypes in cast stone. They’re amazing, simply beautiful. We love to tap on them an feel how solid they are. The manufacturer is a world leader in concrete and light concrete technology, and yet they are still 3- to 4-times the weight and cost, of our plastic version. Making the concrete and shipping the materials and the finished piece is a pretty big carbon load too. They are highly durable though, and one product with a long lifetime almost always beats many replacements. We haven’t ruled out cast stone, but if we create cast stone versions, some major carbon offsetting will be required for sure.

We thought about pottery, but that kiln energy requirements for something this big are incredible and the product is likely to chip or break.

In the future, we may have other products made of wood or bamboo, we’re not ruling that out, but we can’t make these models in wood reliably at a cost that’s acceptable.

Plastic is a good option. It’s not perfect, granted. But it’s lightweight which means less energy to move it, both in a truck or in your arms. It is extremely durable - a long life product is usually better than several short life ones that need to be replaced often. And plastic technologies are getting better, there are a lot of people working on all aspects of plastic manufacture. And, it’s recyclable.

Still, Carbon Offsetting is Essential

This is why all of our pet retreat homes come standard with the bowl and saucer, with drainage and a hidden irrigation tube (that allows you to connect the plant bowl to your automatic drip watering system if you have one). We want you to use the bowl to grow a live plant. Turns out that just by placing a live plant in this bowl, it should eventually eliminate any carbon pawprint that occurred due to the plastic manufacturing and shipping. If you take off the bowl and use the tabletop, that’s okay too — just please keep the plant in the bowl and use it as another element of décor.

We thought about product end-of-life too. The plastic is recyclable. The paint is low or no VOC, no lead of course. There’s small steel bolt and nut that are recyclable. What’s left are three rubber washers. We’re working on that...

An Even Better Carbon Offset

Using the planter on top to zero out the carbon pawprint created in the manufacturing process isn’t all we can do. There’s more. We’ve partnered with a great little company called TreeBanking Inc (www.treebankinginc.com) to give you an option of owning a teak tree in the rain forest of Costa Rica.

Why would you want to own a teak tree in the rainforest of Costa Rica?

What Tree Banking Inc does is replant destroyed rainforest. They plant government protected land with temporary teak trees that will be cut down within probably 20 years. Why? Because it turns out no native tree saplings can withstand the sun’s rays at first. So they plant a temporary tree – one teak tree for every nine square meters of land. After it grows several years old they can plant a tiny rainforest-native tree sapling in its shadow. Then they both grow and create bigger shadows that native plants can sprout under and thrive in. Eventually, the non-native teak can be harvested and sold locally in Costa Rica, you make the profit on that, and nine square meters of rainforest is up and running – a carbon offset that just keeps giving and giving for 99 years at least! How great is that?
Animal Huggers

The professionalism, kindness, generosity and overall helpfulness of the SNAP Clinic here in Houston had a significant affect on us. If you study this organization at any length, you’ll quickly be as amazed as we are — how they can care so much and give so much — with only the knowledge that they, in their own individual and singular way, contribute to the universe by fulfilling their mission: To prevent the suffering and death of cats and dogs due to overpopulation, especially in low-income areas.

Well before we had the first prototype of the pet houses, we knew SNAP would be an important part of our business. We donate a percentage of our profits to this organization. Additionally, we partner with them at their annual galas and are providing, at no charge, our dog and cat houses for their silent auction fund raisers. We plan on doing a lot more of this as the company grows. In fact, we will be donating a one-of-a-kind custom decorated house to the Four Legged Fashion fund raising event, May 2009, through the Dallas Fashion Group.

Product End-of-Life

No.2 plastic is recyclable in virtually every plastic recycling program.

China and Plastic Rotomolding Manufacturing the houses in plastic means we can keep the costs reasonable — cost to produce and the cost to ship because they are light. Our pet retreat homes are manufactured in the United States — in Tennessee. We looked into manufacturing in China because we just assumed it would cost less. The cost to manufacture these houses is exactly the same until you look at the shipping. The cost to get the houses from China to the US was quite a bit and once you added that cost plus all the energy needed to get them from China to the US shoreline and to a warehouse, it was an easy decision where to manufacture. In the end, because of the shipping fees, the hard cost was actually 68% more to manufacture in China.

Your Rainforest Tree

Go with Option Two and offset all carbon emissions. We’ll plant a tree in your name on a Costa Rica plantation that is converting back into a protected rainforest.

T 281.205.1328  •  21638-C State Highway 249 Houston TX 77070-1646  •  media  •  email
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