FOOTPRINT.

Firstly.. what does ‘Low Carbon mean?’ It means, less carbon footprint. But what is a carbon footprint?

The dictionary definition of a carbon footprint is “the amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere as a result of the activities of a particular individual, organisation or community.”

While that tells you what it is, it doesn’t tell us why we should care and why it’s important to keep our carbon low.

We keep our footprint low by;

Sourcing our materials local to the factory, keeping it all within the same post code when possible.

Using energy efficient factories
Using low to zero chemicals in our fabric dying/finishing processes
Using less water finishing and recycling all water after use.

ACROSS THE FULL LIFE CYCLE OF CLOTHING, THE INDUSTRY HAS AN ANNUAL CARBON FOOTPRINT CLOSE TO THAT OF ALL 28 CURRENT EU STATES COMBINED – AT 3.3 BILLION TONNES OF CO2

WHAT IS THE PROBLEM?

The ever increasing amount of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere is one of the causes to Climate Change. Our world is basically covered in a blanket keeping us at a perfect temperature across the world. We are damaging that blanket, creating holes, which is causing warmer and warmer weather, which then creates more powerful and deadly storms and increases our risks of natural disasters and pandemic spreads, this is only going to get worse if we do not stop.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?

Tackling climate change isn’t something that can be done on your own - we need everyone to play a part in reducing our impact on this planet.

Nearly everything we do releases some amount of carbon into the atmosphere, but how much depends on a huge number of factors. This means that you can increase or decrease your carbon footprint with your everyday choices.

For example, the food you buy from your local supermarket has a carbon footprint attached to it. This is because it requires machinery and resources to grow, harvest, package and transport it to where you bought it from. Then, more energy is expended when you cook that food, which adds even more to its carbon footprint.

But simply by purchasing environmentally considered clothing, you can reduce your carbon footprint. If you choose to buy organic, or recycled then no chemicals will be used in its production reducing resources used further, thus lowering the overall carbon footprint. What you’re wearing, drinking and even eating makes a big difference, as vegetarian and vegan diets have much smaller carbon footprints than consuming meat or other animal products. Using 100% renewable electricity, opting for local or ‘already running’ public transport instead of your car can shrink that carbon footprint right down.

WE MONITOR OUR CARBON & WHAT IS OFFSETTING?

At TOBEFRANK we limit our carbon as much as possible and where we can’t we choose to offset it . Many companies offset their carbon, which is either paying money to a third party to do the work or even better, do the work themselves. This can be achieved through projects for example involving planting trees which turn carbon dioxide into oxygen.

However in many cases brands and retailers can be pretty thoughtless when it comes to carbon footprint management. For example, they might produce their clothing in North China, their mill is based in South China, the mill buys the spun yarn from Italy, weaves it in their larger mill in Cambodia and the original cotton farm ironically was in China. Already before the fabric has even been cut it it has a huge carbon footprint. Then they decide to offset it, simply throwing money at the issue instead of improving. Some see offsetting as an easy way to continue business as usual. We believe, should be the last resort.

If we at TOBEFRANK use organic cotton, it’s from a farm in Istanbul, it travels down the road, then its spun and finished all in the same postcode. Keeping our carbon footprint low. Of course we are still producing carbon dioxide, through our machine running, water recycling and colour dying, however, we are tracking this so we know where and how we can improve this.