We love mono materials. Especially pure merino wool and pure organic cotton because we believe in a slow, circular and renewable fashion industry. Still, 100% compositions are not 100% perfect since it has an ecological footprint. To expose room for improvement and to constantly improve, we teamed up with True Cost Label, a third party that calculated the ecological footprint for our unseasoned garments.
LCA
What exactly is an LCA? LCA stands for Life cycle analysis and is a deep analysis of a product's supply chain. True Cost Label mapped out the entire supply chain and broke the products down at the component level. The composition and origin of the raw material, trimmings, and lining are analysed, as well as the treatments that the fabric, such as dyes and finishings, and the garment undergo. This data makes it possible to reveal the invisible costs of a garment: the costs paid by the planet and the people in the industry as co2 emissions, water use and total distance.
Results
Our pure wool jackets and trousers have a climate change impact of 9,95 kg co2 respectively 13,22/12,55 kg co2 -eq per item. The first production order of our pure wool garments included 166 trousers and 169 jackets. We would need to plant 153 full-grown trees capturing co2 for a year to compensate for the emissions to neutralize the impact of our products. The total water use of the garments is equal to 28,5 m3 of water, enough to support the water demand of a family of four for half a year. You can find a recap of the impact results and the benchmarking with traditional industry below and the full LCA report here.
The impact of our pure wool garments is significantly lower than conventional, fast fashion products. Nevertheless, True Cost Label points out the room for improvement and provides us with several strategies to lower our impact even further. An example of those recommended strategies is using recycled wool fibres which could cut impacts in the range of 70-90% of the original impact of virgin Merino wool.
True Cost Label
True Cost Label is an Amsterdam-based, digital start-up that stands for radical transparency. Vincenzo and Jasper aim to fight against greenwashing and to make buying ethical fashion as simple as possible. Their in-depth LCA reports enable brands and consumers to make more informed decisions that involve less pollution and fairer work conditions across the industry.