Sustainability Stories: New sustainable initiatives from four luxury brands

Return Recycle Reward with Molton Brown

Molton Brown‘s ‘Return. Recycle. Reward.’ scheme was launched nationwide after successfully piloting at select stores in the UK. As Molton Brown bottle caps, pumps and Hair Care collection bottles are not widely recycled in the UK, this scheme ensures that each and every component of your used product is transformed and given a new life.

This initiative is part of Molton Brown’s determination to banish single-use plastic and reduce its impact on landfill. As the brand celebrates its 50th year, it is deeply proud to stay loyal to its roots as early pioneers of positive luxury with a conscious care for the world. Molton Brown has always made its products in England, remains cruelty free, and today, is committed to improving its plastic footprint.

How it works: Bring your empty Molton Brown plastic bottles to a Molton Brown store and pop them into a designated recycling bin. Each batch is collected during the next stock delivery, to keep the carbon footprint as low as possible and sent to a partner recycling facility called Cleantech. Cleantech will clean and recycle your bottles, caps and pumps into plastic resin, which can be used for endless purposes in the UK, from moulding new plastic bottles to creating shoes and building roads. As a thank you from Molton Brown, enjoy 10% off when you return a 300ml bottle or bottles that add up to 300ml.

 

MY WARDROBE HQ launches pre-loved boutique at Bicester Village

The value of unused clothing in wardrobes has been estimated at around £30 billion. The clothing and footwear industries account for a combined estimate of 8% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, and it is estimated that £140 million worth of clothing goes into landfill each year. MWHQ believes that the brand can offer a real solution to this crisis, and Bicester Village will now aid them in their mission of extending the life cycle of each garment sold.

MY WARDROBE HQ, a Walpole Brand of Tomorrow 2021, and the UK’s first luxury rental and re-sale marketplace and Walpole  Member Bicester Village together embrace the future of sustainable shopping and fully circular fashion, with a pop-up boutique of pre-loved items stocked from the wardrobes of the fashion re-commerce platform’s top vendors, open for 6 weeks from June 18th.

The new boutique at Bicester Village will be the first ever dedicated pre-loved store from MY WARDROBE HQ , and marks the next phase in the brand’s aim to encouraging customers to continue to support the fashion industry sustainably, by offering them new ways to shop and in encouraging more socially conscious consumption. The partnership between the two shopping destinations is symbolic of how fashion is changing- together they will cater to a millennial customer, with their mindset of investing in circular shopping and in key wardrobe items that last forever. The opening of the boutique will offer Bicester Village customers an opportunity to discover a more sustainable way of enjoying fashion.

G . F Smith champions a number of initiatives that put the planet first, with its Paper Conscious collections growing every day.

Paper, by its very nature, is one of the world’s most sustainable and renewable materials. Continually recycled and natural, it can repeatedly be brought back to life and repurposed.

G . F Smith Extract is composed of coffee-cup waste; G . F Smith Sketch contains flecks of post-consumer industrial fibre; Mohawk Options is made using wind power, and the Gmund Bier range is powered with renewable energy. G . F Smith’s earthy range, Neenah Environment, is made from sustainable raw materials and a minimum of 30% post-consumer waste, and the brand is always on the lookout for purposeful paper products to lower its carbon footprint.

As an example of its dedication to paper that protects the planet, G . F Smith looks to work with mills that support the planting of three trees for every one harvested. And when it comes to people, the brand plants 3,000 trees in and around its home town of Hull every year — that’s 20 trees per employee.

G . F Smith’s environmental plans don’t stop there. From October 2021, it pledges that 100% of the electricity used at G . F Smith will come from renewable energy sources, and where possible its vehicles will be included too. As well as this, it is planning a G . F Smith 100% own waste-paper range.

“At G . F Smith, we are committed to decreasing our environmental impact on the world with our continually renewable and natural paper products. We are proud to champion a number of initiatives that put the planet first. They include a 50% reduction in Scope 1 & 2 emissions, the adoption of our Paper Conscious marque and our commitment to extending the life of our products through a circular economy. We might not be paper-perfect just yet, but we are doing all we can to become more sustainably minded for a better future.” – JOHN HASLAM, JOINT MANAGING DIRECTOR, G . F SMITH.

LVMH luxury group is partnering with weturn

Founded in 2020, the new weturn start-up has created the first recycling chain dedicated to unsold textiles, rolls of fabric and offcuts from major fashion houses, which are all protected by intellectual property, by transforming them into new quality yarns and fabrics that are 100% traceable and European-made.

While the closed-loop recycling rate in the textile industry is currently less than 1%, weturn’s initiative allows fashion houses to recycle their unsold products protected by intellectual property, after considering donation and reuse solutions, to create new eco-designed textiles. Weturn works with several LVMH Group Maisons to support them in recycling their textiles and to help them reuse these recycled materials in future products (packaging, accessories, fabrics for workshops, uniforms for teams or research projects for integration into ready-to-wear products), intended for the original Maisons or other brands and designers in the market. Weturn provides the fashion industry with an innovative solution for achieving recycling rates of over 50%, while
offering the promise of transparency through a traceability chain, from collection to reuse.

“We are delighted that the LVMH group is partnering with weturn, which offers innovative solutions in the field of textile recycling. Today, this partnership allows us to take a new step towards achieving our ambition in the field of creative circularity, which is one of the four strategic priorities of LIFE 360, our environmental policy for the next 10 years. As our designers continue to integrate more and more upcycling into their collections, as the Nona Source platform enables them to obtain high-quality unused fabrics and leathers, and as CEDRE intervenes in the end-of-life of products, weturn offers our Maisons the opportunity to recycle their unsold finished products, branded fabrics and textile packaging in the form of spools of thread. This creates a complete ecosystem around creative circularity, which is a source of inspiration for our designers. The circle is complete!”, says Hélène Valade, Environment Development Group Director, LVMH.

“After a year dedicated to creating a new recycling chain, we are proud to join the circular economy market by working to recycle unsold and protected products alongside prestigious Maisons such as those of the LVMH group, which contribute to the international reputation of France. Our ambition is to contribute to the revival of the European textile industry by demonstrating that a product’s value lies in its raw materials.”, adds Sophie Pignères, Founder of weturn.