Each year, Common Objective, the world’s leading platform for sustainable fashion businesses, recognizes the clothing companies that maximize their benefits to people and minimize their impact on the environment. They believe, like we do, that while fashion is at the epicenter of pollution and mistreated labor, it can also be transformative for the people behind the product, and for their environment when executed correctly. Their level of standard makes us especially proud to announce that we’ve won the 2022 CO Leadership Award! Our commitment to sustainability and ethical labor is being recognized for helping transform lives and contributing to a positive environmental impact. To say that we’re proud of this achievement is an absolute understatement.
Who is Common Objective?
Common Objective is a global tech solution for sustainable fashion business. They connect buyers with an ever growing list of ethical brands and suppliers as a way to make sustainability financially rewarding. CO strives to create value in three dimensions, where people, the planet, and profits are all equally integral to a company’s success. They consistently seek out ways to reward businesses of all sizes for making better choices and applying both environmental and social ethics to every aspect of their production.
What criteria is used to select a winner?
Winners of the CO leadership award are judged on how they meet six essential criteria.
- Mission - Winners must have sustainability principles integral to the business mission as well as demonstrate they are operating in line with them.
- Business model - Companies must demonstrate that their business model is consistent with their mission and supports helping people and minimizing environmental harm.
- Products - All businesses have products that excel across the three dimensions of 'people, planet, and profit'. Each winner is judged on the design and construction quality of their product and the sustainability of the product sourcing and processes.
- Impact - Does the company strive to have a positive effect on the fashion industry as a whole?
- Roadmap - How well can each business state their objectives with specific goals and articulate how to achieve them.
- Communications - Fashion is a visual and creative industry. Leading businesses had great portfolios and a compelling copy showing how they use their platform, network and reach to raise awareness and change behavior in relation to sustainability.
What are the steps Indigenous takes to meet these standards?
Fairtrade Principles
Ensuring that our artisan partners are paid fairly and are provided with safe working conditions is a core part of our company culture. We work hard to provide a year-round dependable source of income for our craftsmen, including fair wages that exceed local and national averages. Our supply chain model allows for flexible schedules and at-home work, so our artisans can spend more time with their families and less time traveling.
Additionally, with our partners in Peru, we work to provide:
- quality, low-cost childcare and invest in local elementary and preschools
- To help women escape domestic abuse and achieve economic independence by investing in programs that provide free skills training and materials.
- Aid projects that bring clean drinking water to artisans and their communities in Peru.
- Provide artisans with zero-interest loans for equipment, education and personal emergencies.
Sustainability Practices
Style should never come at the expense of your values or your health. That's why we make our clothes by hand from 100 percent natural and organic textiles dyed with non-toxic, eco-friendly dyes. We use materials like free-range alpaca fleece and eco-friendly tencel to not only support local farmers but to create safe, high-quality fabrics. Furthermore, each garment is always finished by hand to ensure that it’s made to last forever in your closet, and not in a landfill after one season.
These sustainability practices save us from using 484,50,000 liters of water per year, while also keeping 6,528 oz of the world's deadliest pesticides off the land, away from farmers, and out of clothes. By creating small-batch designs, we also avoid the river pollution that often comes from the dye process at large textile factories and steers clear of overproduction.
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