ALIGN. MEASURE. OFFSET.
We recognize that despite being as eco friendly and sustainable as possible we still have a carbon footprint. To make anything from a sandwich to a sweatshirt it requires resources that have some impact on the earth and its atmosphere. Because honesty and transparency are just as important to us as sustainability, we want to keep it real with you (and Mother Earth). Below we have spelled out our entire process for carbon consciousness.
First, we check in and ALIGN with our sustainability ethos to ensure we make the most conscious choices to minimize our environmental impact. Next, we MEASURE the emissions of everything from the extraction of raw materials to the end of a garment's life with you the customer. And finally, we OFFSET the little bit that’s left with carbon offsets, making Ekoluxe a carbon neutral business.
When we say carbon footprint, we are talking about the whole amount of greenhouse gases produced to, directly and indirectly, create our clothing and run our business. We measure our carbon footprint in equivalent tons of CO2. A carbon footprint is a vital means to understand the impact of our behavior on global warming.
Before we make or do anything, we check in with our sustainability ethos. We ask ourselves, does this fabric, behaviour, etc. align with our best practices? Does this make us the best sustainable fashion brand we can be? This step eliminates potential problems before they can become carbon we need to offset. For example we only use certified natural and recycled materials we can purchase from local vendors and craftsman. We make everything in-house, and ship direct from our studio. Being thorough about our research, choices and considerations helps keep our footprint low from the get go.
We measure five different things to calculate the footprint of both our products (throughout their entire life cycle) and our business operations: materials, manufacturing, transportation, product use, and end of life. We did the calculations for one of our t shirts here so you could get an idea of how we measure up. For context the average carbon footprint of a cotton t shirt is 15kg of CO2.
MATERIALS - This is often the largest part of a garment's carbon footprint. To keep this as low as possible, we only use recycled or sustainably farmed plant-based fabrics from eco-friendly certified producers. Even our tags are made from recycled plastic! When we measure this metric we take into consideration raw material cultivation, fabric manufacturing, dying, and transit.
MANUFACTURING - It takes energy to run sewing machines and air conditioners (to keep our staff comfortable: real talk). But since we are a small business and we have control over our space it's easy to conserve resources and keep this expenditure in check.
TRANSPORTATION - We're an online store so we cannot avoid sending orders. We decided against using order fulfillment centers and ship everything to you directly from our studio. You would be surprised how much carbon emission we save by doing this! We commute to our studio but we drive motorbikes which take considerably less fuel.
PRODUCT USE - We are assuming you are going to wear (and wash) each item of clothing 50 times. For some of you this may sound like a super low number but in reality the average garment is only worn 7 times before it is discarded (seriously tragic, I know). Hopefully most of the time you wear something more than once before you wash it, or as we like to say: wear more and wash less. While we cannot control what you do, we're asking amiga to amiga, that you adopt sustainable laundry habits. Wash with cold water, use environmentally friendly detergents, and hang to dry. (Please note our carbon calculations are assuming you hang your clothes to dry.)
END OF LIFE - Most products end up in a landfill where they emit greenhouse gases into the atmosphere while they decompose. It’s a far from a perfect solution, but YOU are able to help us change it! With your conscious efforts we can MASSIVELY minimize this carbon footprint. We totally understand that you outgrow pieces (emotionally and physically), but we implore you to Mend when possible, Gift or Donate when you're over it but the clothes still have life left, and ultimately Recycle or Compost them when they're truly worn out and lifeless.
We believe that we, and all businesses, should be held accountable for their environmental impact. So, we tax ourselves for the carbon we emit, and invest in VCS (Verified Carbon Standard) offsets from Cool Effect to fund local, Indonesian projects that neutralize our footprint. It is important to note: we calculated our carbon footprint for BOTH Love Khaos and Ekoluxe to be about 92 mTCO2 and choose to offset 151 mTCO2 in a conscious effort to "round up" just to be safe. We do this because measuring some of these metrics can be very difficult and we would rather be carbon negative than the alternative.
