The Journey to a Plastic Free Brand

When I look at my inbox each day I know the most likely topic of conversation from our customers is going to be plastic. It’s not fantastic. Not even OK.Why are we doing it? Why on earth? Lovely clothes but in a polybag? Surely not. I can see the block capitals even if Little Green Radicals fans are too polite to use them.So let me explain why we do it and how we are working on a plan to not do it anymore.

Firstly our clothes go on a long journey starting at our factories in India, then they travel across the sea, into our warehouse and finally they get sent on to you. It’s easy for them to get yukky on the way because of dirt and damp, caused by the monsoon rain in India or just good old fashioned British drizzle on the last part of their voyage.  

Pioneering eco brand Patagonia did a trial to see what would happen if they
removed the plastic bags from some of their clothes. 30% were damaged. Yes, a whopping 30 percent. That’s not good for anyone and it’s certainly not good for the environment.

So we need some kind of protection for our clothes and a couple of years ago we had a bright idea to make bags that are biodegradable. We made them and everything we now sell is packaged in them. The only problem is that while they are recyclable (you can pop them in your domestic recycling) and biodegradable, we did not understand that micro plastic residues were left after the bags biodegraded, even though we knew all about micro-fibres from synthetic clothes as we don’t produce these since our clothes are made with organic and Fairtrade cotton! We now only advise you to recycle our bags.

So we had to come up with a better solution. Bags that biodegrade without leaving nasty residues. That’s tougher because they can’t start degrading before you receive them. But we think we have the solution. Bags that last long enough to get to you with our beautiful clothes still beautiful when they arrive. Then you can compost them in your garden, or put them in with your food waste (I am sure you are cutting down on that too). They are made from plants not petrol. For next season we are putting some of our clothes in them to see how it goes. We’ll let you know which parts of our range are wrapped in plants and we’ll see if this time we can crack it.

Fairtrade. Tick. Organic. Tick. Plastic Free....