How a T-Shirt is Paving the Way

Green Biz

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This is a true story. A really cool, hard-won, real-life story of sustainable product design within the fashion industry (which is practically an oxymoron) and we wanted to make sure that you didn’t miss it.

“This is a story about an extraordinary effort to transform an ordinary piece of clothing.

In June, C&A, the international Dutch chain of retail clothing stores, launched a line of T-shirts certified to the Cradle to Cradle standard, meaning that they were designed and manufactured in a way that is benign to the environment and human health, and whose materials can be recirculated safely back into industrial materials or composted into the soil.

It represents, in no small measure, the future of product design and manufacturing.

Creating a Cradle to Cradle (or C2C) T-shirt — at scale and at an affordable price to the consumer — was no small feat for C&A. It required a board-level commitment, close partnerships with contract manufacturers, an arduous search for replacements for problematic materials and some new messaging to customers.

And so began a first step in transitioning one of the world’s largest apparel retailers to become an exemplar of the circular economy.”

Read the full article published by GreenBiz.com on September 25, 2017; written by Joel Makower.

 

Image courtesy of Flickr CC by Rob Lee