‘Reduce, Reuse, Recycle’

It’s A Nice Sentiment But Not Always Entirely Possible…

The 3 R’s of waste management hierarchy…Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.

I’ve heard those words get tossed around since about the mid 2000's.

Littering is ugly, gross and definitely worthy of financial penalty. I’m glad lawmakers finally put measures in place to help minimize the amount chip bags, pop cans and Big Mac wrappers that end up in the sagebrush around here.

It would also be a safe guess to say that no one is a fan of the yellow liquid-filled window washer fluid containers that often line the highways or of the engorged dirty diapers sweating it out in the summer heat…within a few feet from the garbage can at the local tot lot spray park.

I’m not overly stoked having to peel gum off my shoe nor do I believe any parent is excited about having to pull a dirty greyish-pink street wad out of their 2-year old’s mouth.

Ya, doing one’s best to be responsible with where our garbage ends up as well as attempting to reduce the amounts and what we throw away to begin with is a worthy cause.

Because it’s good to ‘do my part’, I make intentional efforts to do ‘green’ things like remembering to take the reuseable bags out of the car trunk and actually into the grocery store and the arduous task of washing out the peanut butter jar in order to recycle it…sorry, small Ziplocs don’t make that cut (I’ll take suggestions though).

When it comes to purchases, buying something new for the sake of it being new (except for maybe underwear, sheets, socks and my snowboard helmet) isn’t something I generally care about and I’m always happy to be the recipient of a friend’s hand-me-downs.

When considering the LIVN&GIVN business plan/model, I obviously went off what Luke likes, his designs, inspirations, ideas and heart of it all which is giving back. After researching and figuring out via trial-and-error the various ways to go about launching an apparel company that aligned with our mission and values, a few things became clear.

Though we love the environment and wish these stats weren’t the case:

“The average American has been estimated to throw away around 37kg of clothes every year. And globally, an estimated 92 million tonnes of textiles waste is created each year and the equivalent to a rubbish truck full of clothes ends up on landfill sites every second clothing.”-www.bbc.com

…having our niche market of online e-commerce-based apparel being Luke and his little friends (and by default their parents), we simply couldn’t find a way to incorporate sourcing second-hand children’s items for our store.

Selling used kids clothes has many legal implications of varying degrees and it simply wasn’t feasible to go that route. We did, however, decide on a print-on-demand model for many of our items which means those orders are essentially custom ordered on-demand to help minimize unnecessary waste.

As bbc.com further put it, “this system [the traditional clothing and textiles industry as it is] puts pressure on valuable resources such as water, pollutes the environment and degrades ecosystems in addition to creating societal impacts on a global scale.”

Knowing all of that, we wanted to make sure our customers would feel confident on all levels when purchasing and wearing our brand.

Sustainable fashion is the future and that’s why we made sure LIVN&GIVN would be part of the movement.

We chose to source local apparel whenever we can and partner only with socially and environmentally certified manufacturers globally. The print-on-demand system for our T-shirts, hoodies and caps (beanies excluded though they are created only in small amounts) exclusively and only produces items we receive an order for thus avoiding textile waste from overproduction.

Our printing partner’s state-of-the-art printing tech creates almost no wastewaters and uses minimal energy. The printing process is made with sustainability in mind, lowering our carbon footprint and the inks used for apparel printing are water-based and free of harmful chemicals. Care is taken to dispose of any left-over ink according to the ink supplier guidelines.

Thank you for following our LIVN&GIVN journey. I know we keep saying ‘soon’…but really, it’s coming soon!

-Becky & Luke