In order to assist customers to make more educated purchase decisions, sustainable and socially aware womenswear company Baukjen is establishing a Sustainability Index, which will include environmental and social impact rankings for each item in its collections.
It is the goal of the B Corp certified firm to provide its consumers with a higher degree of transparency in order to assist them in better understand the brand’s supply chain, including how material selections and production contribute to the total effect of each Baukjen garment.
With the Higg tools developed by the Sustainable Apparel Coalition, the Baukjen Sustainability Index evaluates each product based on seven distinct metrics to calculate its overall score. A measure called the index is calculated based on five environmental variables, which account for 70 percent of the total score, while the final two components are social, which account for 30 percent of the entire score.
From poor to outstanding, each product is graded on its environmental effect, including greenhouse gas emissions, water consumption, resource depletion, eutrophication, chemical use, traceability, and overall human well-being. Generally speaking, the higher the score, up to a maximum of 100 percent, “the more environmentally friendly and socially responsible a product is,” adds Baukjen.
Example: The 91 percent outstanding impact score of the brand’s ‘Jody’ recycled wool sweater from the autumn/winter 2021 collection, while the ‘Paloma’ top made of environmentally friendly Lenzing Ecovero got an 83 percent excellent impact rating.
With an environmental and social impact index for customers, Baukjen aims to increase transparency in its supply chain.
To begin with, the Baukjen Sustainability Index was developed as an internal tool to evaluate fibers and methods of production in order to assist the brand in identifying areas for development in order to become more sustainable. But Baukjen hopes that by sharing the environmental and social effect of each garment with its consumers, they will not only be more informed about how to purchase responsibly, but they will also be more aware of the fact that sustainability is about much more than carbon dioxide emissions.
As Baukjen points out in a statement, “All things are interrelated in nature, and it is necessary to assess the effect in other ways that take into account resource depletion, pollution, and ecological damage.”
Known together as the House of Baukjen, the womenswear and maternity clothing brands Baukjen and Isabella Oliver have launched a new sustainability index as part of their ongoing commitment to environmental sustainability. As part of its commitment to sustainability, the fashion group has introduced an in-house rental program that allows customers to rent styles for two weeks at a time. It also produces a collection that is composed of 90 percent or more environmentally friendly fibers, with the percentage increasing. Pre-Loved is another initiative of the company aiming at encouraging past clients to give pre-owned clothing to be reused, re-loved, or recycled in an effort to make fashion more circular and sustainable.
Recently, House of Baukjen was recognized by B Corp as an ‘Impact Business Model,’ and was identified as the “highest scoring” fashion B Corp in the United Kingdom and the second highest in Europe, with an “outstanding” ranking.
In collaboration with Oxfam, Baukjen and Isabella Oliver are launching the Second Hand September campaign.
With the introduction of the Baukjen Sustainability Index, Baukjen and Isabella Oliver are collaborating with the charity Oxfam for Second Hand September, as part of Oxfam’s Pre-Loved take-back scheme, to raise awareness of sustainability. The things that customers no longer wear can be donated to either Baukjen or Isabella Oliver to be re-loved, reused, or discarded, according to their preferences. In order to help Oxfam’s essential work to end poverty throughout the globe, 50 percent of the net revenues from the sale of both brands will be donated.
A major objective of the Baukjen x Oxfam collaboration is to minimize the amount of maternity and non-maternity fashion trash that goes to landfills each year, as well as the amount of manufacturing that is done. The slow fashion business will plant a tree on behalf of its consumers for every item of clothes donated to them through Eden Reforestation Projects.
Baukjen As De Swaan Arons, the company’s founder, and creative director stated in a statement, “Our Preloved plan enables our clothing to be worn for longer periods of time with the goal of reducing our impact on the environment while increasing the rate of reuse and recycling.” Not only will you be contributing to the protection of our environment, but you will also be contributing to the well-being of many people as revenues from our pre-owned collections will support Oxfam’s important programs.
In our role as promoters of slow fashion, we are committed to circularity, and we are pleased to have launched Pre-Loved and rental programs, which are assisting in the development of tangible steps towards a circular fashion business model.