You may have seen a lot of big brands add phrases like “made with recycled content” “sustainably sourced” “organic cotton” etc to their garments as a way to join in on the hype of “sustainable fashion”, but should we really believe these are conscious decisions big brands are making or are they just telling us what we want to hear so that we continue to shop with them? Are they sustainable or is this greenwashing ?
At mills we want to be as transparent as possible when it comes to our brand and our mission. We still have many steps to make along this journey as we have only just started, but we have gone in making sure we strive for the the most achievable choices when it comes to sustainability. After all we are another fashion brand the world didn’t really need, but our love for creating cute colourful clothes has found us here in our first few months trading as a clothing brand, so the very least we want to do is make the right choices in this industry. We are not here to pump out endless amounts of collections at a fast pace with trends that are hard to keep up with, so we want to be open when it comes to talking about our three most important values.
This blog post will dive in to the journey behind ocean waste becoming the yarn that is ECONYL, the very yarn we pride ourselves on using in this collection we have recently dropped. We have been shouting about our brand being made from ocean waste, so we thought it was time to dive a bit deeper in to the journey of the yarn and why mills has decided to use it!
mills works with trusted fabric suppliers that use regenerated nylon to manufacture and create new fabrics. They work with companies link ECONYL, who are one of the few organisations that make the regeneration of plastic possible.
It starts with rescuing waste otherwise polluting the earth, like fishing nets and industrial plastic all over the world. That waste is then sorted and cleaned sorted and cleaned to recover all of the nylon possible.
The plastic is then out through a regeneration process including purification to get it back to its original purity. Taking it right back to how it started out before it was made in to original source.
The regenerated nylon is then processed in to yarns and polymers for the fashion and interior industries. Brands like mills then use fabrics created using these yarns with the hope to create a closed loop process.