Sustainability

The Future of Fashion Is Circular:

The fashion industry is almost completely linear, with large amounts of non-renewable resources used to produce products that ultimately end in landfill or incineration. Disposable fashion puts significant pressure on non-renewable and threatened resources, especially water, as well as producing large quantifies of waste, a large degree of which ends up in landfill or for incineration.

In 2018, Burberry declared they destroyed £28 million worth of stock in one year to guard against counterfeits.

Further, fast fashion has become the norm. According to The Textile Review in 2019, “an estimated 1.7 million tonnes of textiles are consumed in the UK each year. 1.5 million tonnes of this goes into landfill.”

The industry’s methods and materials can also be highly polluting including its use of fossil fuels which generates carbon dioxide that contributes to global warming as well as the use of dyes and finishing processes which rely on toxic chemicals that affect the health of workers and leach out into rivers and ground water systems degrading the land, compromising drinking water and killing fish. Finally, synthetic fibres in the clothes we wear every day affect our oceans, rivers and marine life. When these clothes are washed tiny plastic microfibers too small to be trapped in filters enter not only the water system but also the food chain.

Read more about this important topic on Vogue, SustainYourStyle.org and ID Magazine.

Why we focus on pre-owned luxury and vintage:

With over 15 years of experience working in the fashion industry, as a premium bag product developer, our founder worked closely with designers and factories across the World. She experienced, first hand, the intense resources required to produce new products. From the use of raw materials, as well as chemicals and water in the preparation of these materials such as dyeing leathers and making hardware. Her decision to focus exclusively on pre-owned luxury and vintage ensures that the lifespans of these bags is extended, and that even more of us can enjoy them.

As customers, each of us have the power to make informed choices about what we purchase and from whom we purchase. With the rise in the circular economy, to reuse, repair and recycle, we believe we’re only at the very start of achieving a more sustainable future.

Our efforts to advance the cause:

At The-Hosta we not only celebrate the craftsmanship of designers and vintage bags, but we’re also advocates of sustainability and reducing the negative impact on the environment. Whether you’re buying a pre-owned bag or selling a piece that you no longer wish to keep, you’re helping the circular economy and the planet.

Our commitment extends beyond just the circular economy, and as part of our mission to further the cause of sustainability, we:

Dispatch all of our orders in plastic free packaging made from recycled materials. (This packaging can also be fully recycled).
Don’t discount or participate in Black Friday sales. Fundamentally we believe that discounting is unsustainable as it encourages the purchase of items that people don’t need, and, like the ‘Make Friday Green Again‘ collective, we believe that this excessive consumption and overproduction contributes to climate change. Instead, we price each of our items fairly, and encourage our customers to shop responsibly.
Have fully offset our carbon footprint, including the footprint of the orders we dispatch and the operation of our website, through the planting of trees through Ecologi.

We want to hear from you:

We continue to review and seek to actively improve our levels of sustainability and environmental responsibility. We want to open the discussion with our customers about how we can improve further, so please get in touch if you have any further suggestions or comments.

Thank you for reading.

The-Hosta x