March the 31st was the final day of B-Corp month. A full calendar month dedicated to highlighting the B-Corp movement and a way for companies to share details of the positive impact their having.
B-Corp measures a companies impact across five key areas & these are;
1) Governance 2) Staff & Workers 3) Environment 4) Community 5) Customers
Over the course of B-Corp month & during our weekly team meetings we discussed our impact as a company. We chat and often share thoughts on what it means to be a sustainable company very regularly.We are all well aware, "sustainable" has very much so become a buzz word these days. But what does it actually mean? Every brand is using it as a selling point now. Before we go any further, please don't take this the wrong way. We encourage eveyone & every company to operate and live in a more sustainable way. But in our industry & where we sit as a company it's very obvious to us that the textile / fashion industries are very far away from being sustainable.
So what can we decipher from the word "sustainable" in the apparel industry?
We recently posted a video on our Instagram and LinkedIn pages on this. We are by no means experts, we are far from it. But we know exactly what is going on in our industry and the mass use of the word sustainable has got to be confusing for the customer. We always work very closely with our manufacturers to use organic & recycled materials when and where we can. However if something is organic or recycled - it is still using a lot of water in the production process, it is still contributing to carbon emissions & it still have to travel from our manufactures to our warehouse on the Dingle Peninsula. So when you think about it - we can't actually say we are a fully sustainable apparel brand.
So where does Outwest sit?
After a lot of thinking, team discussions and reflection our aim to to create gear that lasts a long time. To create durable & high quality apparel that doesn’t need to be replaced after a few wears.We think that doubling down our focus on quality and durability is a much more effective approach in our efforts to be more "sustainable" We will continue to use organic & recycled materials at each step.
We will continue to work closely with all of our manufacturering partners to always improve and be at the very front of new developments, new materials and new production processes.
This allows me to loop back to BCorp very nicely. As a brand, Outwest actually sits in a very unsustainable industry.
But for us, BCorp is about much more. Yes we are doing our best to tackle the issues at hand, but we are looking at other areas too such as our workers, our community here locally & our customers.
So for Outwest - we will continue to focus on the positive impact we can have. We will continue doing our best to be better across all areas of our business. In a nutshell, it's onwards from here!
While we continue to focus on our impac, continue doing better and continue driving positive change.
The Outwest Team
