B Corporation™ Focus: The Planet
The greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it.
- Robert Swan, founder of the 2041 Foundation, environmentalist and polar explorer
The world we live in is at a tipping point, and the time to act isn't today; it was yesterday. Falling to take action now to reduce environmental harm will result in a devastating and possibly irreversible impact on global warming, rising sea levels, increased food scarcity, and public health. But taking steps to reduce the environmental damage currently inflicted on the planet offers countless benefits, including:
- drastically reducing millions of premature deaths every year
- boosting food security by preventing annual staple crop losses
- safeguarding vital ecosystems and the benefits they provide
- decreasing the risk of dangerous and irreversible climate tipping points
- and making significant contributions to achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
As a B Corp™, we’ve taken steps to improve our company’s environmental impact dramatically. We understand that we must incorporate responsible stewardship into every aspect of our business to achieve sustainability. In our commitment to responsible fashion, we are rethinking, restructuring and improving upon the way we conduct business at every touchpoint, placing sustainability and ethical stewardship at the core of everything we do.
Our goal is to reduce our environmental footprint by minimizing waste, using sustainable fabrics, and implementing eco-friendly practices as we strive to reach the highest level of social and environmental responsibility. We recognize that there is a long way to go for our company—and for the entire clothing industry—but remain steadfast in our commitment to fostering positive change.
Everything we do must be done while remaining mindful of our impact on the environment, from the way we manufacture our clothing to how we conduct operations at our HQ. Below, we briefly describe the steps we’ve taken to reduce our environmental footprint.
Garment Production
How We Design
We are proud that 100% of our clothing is designed and tested in Canada at our headquarters in Winnipeg. We are pleased to provide a significant source of industry jobs within the city while supporting the local economy.
Even though we manufacture our clothing overseas, we believe it is equally important to take care of the people who make our clothing. We ensure each of our manufacturing partners is committed to the highest levels of social compliance, alongside environmentally conscious production.
Superior Quality
We design our styles to go the distance. Using the highest quality fabrics, finishings and manufacturing processes, our products can last, maintaining integrity wear after wear and wash after wash. More durable clothing means fewer items end up in a landfill.
Samples
We sell all sample garments locally to prevent apparel from reaching landfills and donate proceeds from those sales to charity.
We donate our out-of-date fabric samples to a local art program for use in a variety of projects.
Footwear purchased for seasonal photoshoots is reused or donated to a local charity.
Hangtags
To reduce the number of hangtags we produce each season, we have amalgamated essential product information onto one tag, eliminating multiple tags per item. The information deemed non-essential was removed from hangtags and can now be found online, conveniently listed on each item’s product page. This decision has resulted in a nearly 50% reduction in our hangtag production.
All of our hangtags are FSC® (Forest Stewardship Council) certified. Dedicated to promoting responsible forestry, the FSC provides a designation that verifies the paper product used to create our hangtags come from reliable sources and meet FSC’s strict environmental and social standards.
Packaging
We make all our polybag packaging from recycled post-consumer materials. Our large, tri-branded polybags, used to contain individually wrapped items in transit, are made from recycled materials. However, we still require individual plastic bags to package individual items, which we call polybags. As of Fall 2021, we replaced these plastic bags with bags containing 100% recycled post-consumer materials.
Headquarters
Energy Efficiency
We use LED lighting and Energy Star-rated appliances in our office space and warehouse.
Using these efficient alternatives, our lighting is estimated to use at least 75% less energy and last 25 times longer than the traditional incandescent option.
Internal Paper Saving
We have a recycling program for all office paper usage. By diligently tracking and reporting our monthly paper consumption and encouraging staff to "go digital," we reduced our 2019 yearly consumption of paper by 34%. 2020 saw a dramatic decrease in paper usage as our team transitioned to a work-from-home setting in response to the global pandemic.
We continuously work to reduce excessive paper consumption by:
- collecting all wastepaper for recycling or reuse.
- changing to paper made from recycled fibre whenever possible.
- changing to paper made without a chlorine finish whenever possible.
- selecting papers with fibres from responsibly managed sources whenever possible.
- purchasing papers from environmentally committed and transparent manufacturers whenever possible.
As a B Corp™, we’re committed to continually improving our assessment score, which means we’re always on the lookout for ways we can reduce our environmental impact. we’re excited to share with you, our customer, all the different ways we will fine-tune and refine our operations and hope you'll come back to learn more about our efforts.