Today I want to tell you a bit about how we make our homeware products and totes, and what they are made of. These are two very important things to consider when trying to reduce our overall environmental impact and increase sustainability.
Where, how and from what materials we make our products
It’s important to know who is behind your textiles and who is involved in the production process. We make everything here locally. Our way of being able to control and be sure about the traceability of our products is to design them ourselves and make them locally.
A local team
We have a small team of local seamstresses and knitters here in Madrid. So we know everyone by name, we know how they’re getting on and we pay them a fair wage. We also train them as well. That’s part of the Knitting a Future Project. Which is all about helping people in vulnerable situations into the workforce by training them and giving them opportunities to develop.
So that’s a major impact we’re making by having the production here in Spain, locally.
Not harming people, animals or the planet
The other thing as well as traceability, about knowing who is behind our materials and production means there’s no human exploitation. As you probably know, all our products are vegan. We don’t want to harm animals…and also we don’t want to harm people! All Verdonce products are PETA Approved Vegan.
What are our products made out of?
So the other part of being transparent and accountable is knowing what our products are made out of. As I’ve said, they are vegan products. Every item we choose, we choose carefully, making sure it’s a natural, plastic-free fibre.
So for example, in the case of our apron, they are made of 100% recycled cotton combined with hemp straps. This is European hemp, which we source in The Netherlands. And the recycled cotton, that’s from a local mill here in Spain which has the Global Recycled Standard (GRS) certification.
Recycled Cotton Apron with Hemp Straps
That means that we can control every step of the process very tightly and there is traceability right through the supply chain.
Circularity: obtaining new fibres from existing cotton
So the cotton, just very briefly. When talking about recycling cotton, we have cotton which is pre-consumer, or post-consumer. Pre-consumer is cotton that has not been used like offcuts. For example when other textiles are made, there are offcuts which can go to waste, and currently about 90% of that just goes to landfill. That’s what we mean by pre-consumer cotton.
Post consumer is when you take a product to recycle at the end-of-life. It can be sorted and you can separate the cotton materials from other materials. All of this cotton gets broken down. From that a new thread can be made and then we can spin and weave new cotton: we can literally give it another life. So that’s what we mean by circularity.
For another example, take our Slow Living bags. We use the same combination of materials as the apron. We’ve got the hemp straps. This is a crossbody strap it’s a very nice unisex bag. I like this one a lot.
Recycled Cotton Crossbody Tote
The straps are made from hemp and the body is recycled cotton, 100% GRS recycled cotton. And that goes for the lining as well. We use a different cotton lining on the inside to make a really nice contrast. That’s also GRS recycled cotton.
All our totes and shoppers are stitched by our local team of seamstresses, here in Madrid.
We want to make a positive contribution
I hope that’s given you some insight into how we do things here at Verdonce, and the way we really think through the whole impact to try to make a really positive contribution.
Alright. Cheers guys.
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