Sustainability starts with design

For any product to have shot at being sustainable, it takes more than just sustainable materials.

Think about this for a second. For a garment to be sustainable it must be designed with an intent to withstand changes in trend, made from high-quality sustainable materials, and manufactured with a long life in mind.

Although it’s funny to buy that cheap polyester sweater printed with ‘Happy New Year F***ers 2021’ or some other delightful novelty message, the reality is that you’ll only wear it once… or possibly twice if you’re painting something messy on a winter’s day.

The lifespan of that product was intentionally designed to be short – in some cases only 10 wears at most – and after it is thrown into landfill the material’s plastic polymers will stick around polluting the earth for up to 500 years.

You might think “It’s ok, my ‘Goodbye 2020’ NYE sweater was made from organic cotton”, but nope still not ok, sorry. Mass consumption of energy and water to produce items of a disposable nature poses a threat to the planet, even if made from ‘sustainable’ materials that biodegrade. You can blame the designers for slapping the quickly-outdated slogan on the front.

The same is true for fast fashion brands who release new ‘must-have’ products every week to feed the insatiable demand they have created. Quality is disregarded by designers who know that the item is unlikely to be worn more than ten times before it is ‘out of style’.

Responsibility for overconsumption doesn’t only fall on shoppers, it needs to be considered at every level.

Our garments can be worn daily for years, and they will not fall victim to fashion’s hysterically shifting trends.

That’s why you won’t be seeing us release an impractical but trendy micro-handbag or clear PVC jeans anytime soon.

Selecting our materials

 All our products are made from sustainable materials including SeaCell, GOTS-certified organic cotton, and GRS-certified recycled polyester.

We ensure all our products are ethically produced and that we hold a high standard for the treatment of workers, this means doing more than just preventing forced or child labour (a very low bar set by some ‘ethical’ companies).

Our organic cotton is certified under GOTS  (Global Organic Textile Standard) so no pesticides, chemical fertilizers, or GMO-seeds can be used. GOTS also monitors where wastewater is disposed of and how the crops are picked and watered. Most importantly the certification guarantees fair treatment of workers.

Additionally our GRS (Global Recycling Standard) certified recycled polyester guarantees that it is created using post-consumer PET plastic bottles. This is necessary because some greenwashing brands ‘recycle’ newly made plastic bottles that have never been used, just to look ‘eco’… that’s a new level of insincerity for sure.

Of the hundreds of other sustainable fabrics on offer we have selected SeaCell (made from Icelandic brown algae/kelp), and Smartcel (made from beech cellulose with zinc).

These silk-like semi-synthetic cellulose fibres are 100% biodegradable, they are kinder to the environment than conventional synthetic fibres as no chemicals are created as waste in the production. So why aren’t these materials, along with other innovative fibres like Piñatex (a leather alternative made from pineapple leaves) and QMilk (made from cows’ milk), more widely used? Well, honestly, a lot of it comes down to money, ignorance, and laziness.

As polyester and conventional cotton dominate the industry, alternative materials are generally produced on a small-scale making them far more expensive than their shitty counterparts – which are produced using exploitative practices; paying workers low wages and using polluting pesticides.

A lot of the time this makes alternative materials inaccessible to the general market. By carefully selecting our sustainable materials and steering away from the expense of low-scale ‘novelty’ fabrics, we’ve found a way to offer sustainability at a sustainable price.

Another large factor causing resistance in the fight against the big polluters is good ol’ human nature which tells us all to ‘stick to what you know, buy the polluting polyester t-shirt’.

So thanks for daring to step outside of that box with us by shopping sustainably, we appreciate it and the world will too!

Manufacturing (where, how, by whom?)

There’s a great deal of emphasis placed on sourcing the most sustainable raw materials, but up to 70%^[1] of the emissions from the creation of a garment are released during the processing (washing, dyeing, yarn spinning, finishing, etc.). For example, for a standard woven garment 150 different machines^[2] are used in the laying, cutting and sewing processes alone, expending 46% of the total energy used during the processing of the item.

In the developing countries where most of fast fashion’s irresponsible and cheap processing and manufacturing takes place the power grid relies on the dirtiest form of energy, coal. China is 77% powered by coal. In India the figure is 70%.

To avoid this we use certified factories in Portugal and Turkey, where coal makes up around 30% to 40% of the energy supply. For comparison the US uses 33% coal.

But the energy heavy processes are not the only thing plaguing manufacturing. The industry is known for its long history of poor ethics, with the use of child labour, forced labour, poverty wages, and inhumane working conditions.

We all want nice things, but surely not at the expense of another human being’s suffering?

Just ensuring that children and slaves aren’t at work in your factory is not enough, workers should reap the benefits of their employment and must be allowed to enjoy life, with their happiness and wellbeing held as a priority.

Our suppliers offer their employees a living wage or above, with a safe working environment free of harmful chemicals, harassment, discrimination, and with the right to form trade unions.

All our factories hold OEKO-tex Standard 100 certification as proof of there being no toxic or harmful chemicals involved in the manufacturing process.

Where was your t-shirt really made? Near market production

The average t-shirt travels 37,000 km from the cotton field to it’s point of sale. That’s the same distance as six flights from Sweden to New York, or three return flights – it’s a long way.

Your jet-setting $5 t-shirt has journeyed from a cotton field in Uzbekistan to a yarn spinner in Egypt, to a fabric mill in China, then a dye house in Bangladesh, before being manufactured in Morocco and finally arriving at a warehouse in Europe or the US. Madness.

It might read ‘Made in Spain’, but all that really means is that Spain was a stop along the way after visiting several other countries where exploitative practices made that inexplicably low price tag possible.

Most fast fashion companies have only one criteria when choosing manufacturing and production locations: cheap, cheap, cheap.

This gives business to countless sweatshops in developing countries with few environmental regulations and millions of workers desperate to earn just 40 cents an hour in appalling and sometimes life threatening conditions.

If these companies do reconsider the inhumane working conditions of their factories, it is usually for the sole purpose of avoiding a PR disaster in the media.

We’re not saying everyone should only be buying garments made locally – but let’s try to avoid flying fibers, yarns and fabrics on a round-the-globe trip in order to take advantage of the cheapest labor possible.

By locating cotton farmers, yarn spinners, fabric mills, dyes houses, and manufacturers that are in close proximity to each other we are typically able to minimize the total distance our garments travel by up to 85%. That’s a job worth doing.

Sustainable aftercare

Ok so this one is mostly down to you, take note.

Even after we’ve done our part making your clothing as sustainable as possible, there is far more that can be done to minimize the product’s impact whilst it’s in your home.

Approximately 40%^[1]of ​​ a garment’s total carbon footprint is released during consumer use and at the end of its lifecycle (if it ends up in landfill).

Doing laundry no longer requires much manual labor at all and few of us know any of the “husmorsknep” (housekeeping tips and tricks) which were common knowledge to our parents’ generation.

Instead we opt to just throw our t-shirt in the wash after wearing it once, and we let the washing machine deal with a tiny stain instead of simply removing it with a cloth. You may even send your wrinkly shirts to the dry cleaners instead of bothering to air and iron them.

But next time you’re loading up your laundry basket with nearly-clean clothes, consider this…

If all consumers just skipped 1 in 6 washes, washed half of our laundry at a maximum of 30C, and replaced 1 in 6 of our tumble dryer cycles with open-air drying we could reduce global carbon emissions by almost 190million tons per year.

That’s roughly the equivalent of removing 150million passenger vehicles from the road for a full year.

We can’t change your laundry habits for you, but we do our best. All garments in our Organic Cotton and Seaweed lines include an anti-bacterial treatment which means your clothes will stay fresh much longer and you will need to wash much less frequently.

By avoiding washing an item of polyester clothing you can prevent the release of  700 thousand to 6 million tiny fibres called ‘microplastics’, some of which will pass through filtration systems and pollute the world’s oceans.

For this reason we only use recycled polyester in outerwear garments that are not intended to be washed often.

Transparency

The only way for companies like us and our suppliers to be held accountable is to demand transparency at all stages of production.

The origins and certifications of Hues’ products can be easily viewed by using your phone to scan the sewn in chip. We have nothing to hide.

Swiping your Hues’ product with your phone will reveal when, where, and by whom the garment was produced. It will also compare the environmental impact of your garment to that of the industry average.

It will provide the specific location of each supplier in the chain of production – following the product from the yarn spinner, to the fabric mill, dye house, manufacturer, and finally the warehouse.

It will also list the exact composition of your garment (for example: 70% organic cotton, 20% Seacell, 10% smartcel), and will go into detail about the raw materials used.

Additionally, you will find links to the relevant certificates for our suppliers. From our GOTS certified organic cotton to our OEKO-tex Standard 100 toxic chemical-free manufacturing process, and our GRS approved polyester.

But if your questions are left unanswered, feel free to reach out and ask us.

Offsetting the impact

In order to offset the carbon footprint we produce as a company (despite our careful efforts), we designate funds to protect one square metre of Sweden’s Primeval Boreal Forest for each garment that we produce.

A chip sewn into the label of each of our garments will reveal the coordinates of the associated ancient woodland when scanned with your phone. Your assigned square metre is then protected from future exploitation and deforestation through an NPO (Naturarvet) here in Sweden.

Sweden is one of only eight countries to contain Primeval Boreal Forests, which have remained largely untouched since the last ice age. These dense forests act as ‘carbon sinks’ and store more carbon per cubic meter than almost any landscape in the world.

Protecting our existing forests rather than planting new trees is our way of offering compensation for the climate impact that our production has, despite our painstakingly considered choice of raw materials, suppliers and packaging.