Sustainability

All of our clothing products are certified as being made from organic cotton, recycled plastic, or a blend of the two. These have a drastically lower ecological impact than conventional cotton or virgin polyester in terms of their water and energy usage, and carbon emissions. We provide each bulk order customer with a report detailing the environmental savings made by using these fabrics.

We use only water-based, solvent-free, plastic-free inks and heat transfers for garment decoration - even the transfer backings are made of PET, which is all recycled!

Our embroidery thread is manufactured in the UK or in the "green city" of Freiburg, Germany. It is made with recycled water, uses 60% less water than standard embroidery, and contains no hazardous substances which are often used in the dye process. Using this kind of embroidery maintains the organic certification of our products.

Any swing tags attached to garments are made of recycled card, attached by recycled string made from textile factory floor sweepings. Even the invoice or packing list in every box is made of recycled paper.

Our suppliers all have some form of environmental and labour accreditations, and when you enquire about particular products we can list the certifications that apply to it. You can read more about the different types of accreditation by clicking here.

The vast majority of our stock is held in the UK and delivered to us by DPD's carbon neutral service.

Everything we deliver is sent in recycled and/or recyclable packaging.

For public customers ordering from our sites, this takes the form of easily recycled craft paper bags or green recycled mailers that can be placed in your household recycling to be given another life. Our paper mailers are 100% recyclable and biodegradable. They can even be composted right in your garden due to an additive in the material, and comes with instructions on the bag! They're printed with vegetable ink and made right here in the UK.

We pack some collection orders and some large orders in white mailing bags made of sugar cane.

For bulk orders we never purchase virgin cardboard boxes, we simply reuse boxes we've been sent ourselves from our various suppliers, and appreciate when our suppliers do this too - we once had an order delivered in an old Corn Flakes box! We use recyclable paper tape to seal them, and our postage labels are thermal printed, so no nasty inks there either!

If you find tissue paper has been used to wrap or protect your order, this is recycled from a paper mill right here in Lancashire!

We use Royal Mail for all our direct to consumer deliveries across the globe as they have the lowest average carbon footprint and best rates on small items. We use delivery emissions data they provide to work out the carbon footprint of our deliveries and then offset 10x this amount annually using tree-planting schemes right here in North West England.

For larger orders for organisations rather than individuals, we uses DPD's carbon neutral service where we can, or deliver to you direct using our company van, for which we also offset 10x the emissions!

Wherever possible we ask suppliers to deliver to us in plastic free packaging. If this isn't possible, we separate all our waste in to different recycling groups using specific bins in our workshop and office, and recycle it. Because of this policy we divert the vast majority of our waste from landfill.

Any returned/damaged garments that can't be sold are either worn by us for work, used as print samples for potential customers, or donated to charity.

We only use recycled paper and card stock for all our invoices, leaflets, business cards and anything else! Even our company branded pens that we give away at events are made from biodegradable wheat straw fibre!

Not only do we offer free educational talks on the environmental impact of the clothing industry and regularly post about the same on our social media pages, but we also are constantly learning within the company. We often visit and speak at sustainability conferences all over the country.

We aim to keep our carbon footprint as low as possible and actively take steps to reduce emissions and waste wherever possible. Where we can't avoid it, we add it into our annual footprint (calculated using the Carbon Footprint Calculator for small businesses) and then offset ten times this amount using tree planting programmes right here in North West England.

From day one our offices and work spaces have been powered by renewable green energy.

We can be quite picky when it comes to who we work with. We're happy to provide clothing to companies and organisations who are genuinely trying to reduce their environmental impact, but we have turned down orders from organisations who did not match our vision. If you're wanting a t-shirt that costs less than a cup of coffee, you've come to the wrong people!

We will always do our best to provide the most competitive quotes for our clients, but this will not be at the expense of our environmental principles. You'll be surprised how affordable sustainable clothing can be and as we say - clothing needn't cost the earth, financially or environmentally.

We don't hold masses of stock on site, we get what we need for each individual job from our suppliers to eliminate as much waste as possible. We'll always check stock before accepting an order to advise if there will be any delays.