Sustainability: Minimising Our Impact

We're making considered decisions in every part of our supply chain to minimise our environmental impact.
Currently, we're focusing our efforts on reusing things that already exist - turning discarded plastic bottles, recycled post-consumer plastic waste and fishing nets into our bold, printed shirts, loungewear and accessories.

We only use fabric made from recycled materials in our range. Currently, we use two types of fabric:
1) Fabric made from recycled plastic bottles: this is used on our shirts, printed face masks, headbands and hair scrunchies.
2) Fabric made from recycled post-consumer waste and fishing nets, made from ECONYL® yarn: this is used in our mockturtle tops, flares, snoods and block-colour face masks. 

The billions of plastic bottles still used and discarded every day across the world aren’t going anywhere soon, so we are giving them new purpose by turning them into the clothes you wear. Recycled plastic also uses ~65% less energy to produce than virgin plastic, so it's carbon footprint is significantly smaller than polyesters and nylons.

Our hope is that one day, virgin plastic stops being manufactured altogether, but for now, we're reusing this waste rather than letting it go into landfill or our oceans.

Our fabric manufacturers are certified by the Global Recycle Standard (GRS) and SCS Global Services meaning they have met strict requirements for their recycling process, are providing good working conditions for staff, and are ensuring that harmful environmental and chemical impacts are minimised. The fabrics are also certified as Standard 100 by OEKO-TEX®, meaning it is 100% free of harmful substances. 

We always recommend washing our fabrics in our microfibre washing bags. These bags catch micro fibres that are shed when washing. Whilst pretty much all fabrics shed fibres, synthetic micro fibres in particular can pollute our rivers, oceans and waterways and harm the marine ecosystem. By using an eco-friendly washbag we can make our impact by reusing and recycling single use plastics whilst ensuring we don't let these micro plastics flow into our waterways.
 

 

3. Digitally printed in England and Italy using non-toxic inks

Our fabrics are either printed in Worcestershire or Italy, depending on the type. Our Worcestershire printing company uses Azo dye-free certified non-toxic inks and zero waste sublimation or digital printing. 

The designs are first printed onto a transfer paper sourced from sustainable forests, and after use the paper is then recycled through a specialist waste collection service.

By digitally printing out fabrics, it means we use only the ink needed to print our designs. We've opted to digitally print because it is less wasteful than other traditional printing techniques that typically use a huge amount of water and excess ink in the process. The dyes are cured using a combined pressure and dry heat process that does not require water.

Our printed fabric goes from Worcestershire to London or Norfolk, where it is cut and crafted into the finished product by skilled seamstresses in small quantities to avoid making excess stock that goes unsold. Our seamstresses are all paid the living wage as an absolute minimum (depending on experience), and work in excellent conditions with plenty of space, ventilation and light. Many of our seamstresses also work at home or in their own studios. We regularly meet our seamstresses in person and know them well!

In the process of cutting fabric to make clothing, there is always a level of wastage, where scraps of fabrics are left over. We turn these fabric off-cuts into other items like hair scrunchies to minimise wastage in our supply chain.

View scrunchies