One of the main reasons I love vintage, apart from it being fantastic and a piece of history, is that it is eco friendly! Fast fashion is getting a lot of heat at the moment with the spot light being on their practices and the harm it is causing the environment. As I am sure you are aware, there is a call on brands to be more aware of how they produce their garments right from production all the way through to delivery to the customer. And as a consumer, we are being urged to look at our own consumption of everything and the effect it is having on the world.
Selling and buying vintage is already a great thing to do for the environment, reducing the need for new clothes and stopping cloth ending up in landfill. But I am always aware that I could do more. So, I am now proud to say Honeykins Vintage is as close to a fully eco-friendly company as we can be! How have we managed this? Let me tell you.....
Apart from the clothes we sell being second hand, the vast majority of our rails, mannequins and props have also been brought second hand. Anything we have bought new for running the business can be used over and over, they are not single use items. The clothes we sell are repaired, extending their lives and where I can, I always use vintage thread, zips and notions. We now use eco friendly washing liquid, we never use a tumble dryer, and in treating the clothes we freeze them to get rid of any nasties rather than using pesticides. We are also now growing our own lavender which is a natural moth repellent, which will be used to re-fill our lavender bags in the stock room.
Our labels are re-used business cards and we use string to attach them to our clothes, so there is no plastic there, and we re-use the labels and the string again. At the moment, we do have plastic bags due to the British weather causing our previous bags to disintegrate at a very wet outdoor fair, but we always ask if our customers have their own bags first, and ask that they re-use them.
But it does not stop there! When we send out any of our orders, we now use eco-friendly packaging that is made from recycled materials, and can themselves be recycled. So the paper we print on, the mailing bags and boxes, the paper tape to seal them, the labels and the stickers are all eco-friendly! Even our car is an Eco-Boost, so when ever we go to the Post Office or to a fair, we are doing our best to keep emissions down.
We are not perfect however, and there will always be products we have to use that are not 100% sustainable or recycle friendly, but we do our best to source alternatives when current items we use run out.
Do you have any ideas how we may change our practices? Or want some ideas how you can make small changes at home to help? Get in touch, we are always open to new ideas to help preserve the world.