For every online order, we plant a tree
In 2021 we made the decision to directly combat climate change with reforestation via the Treeapp organisation, donating a pound per online order to contribute toward one of their many worldwide projects. This is now a standard. At the end of each month, we tally up our online orders and pay Treeapp a pound for each one placed, thus balancing our own carbon footprint in an effort to combat climate change.
Why we decided to contribute to reforestation
Being mindful of our sources and resources at a grassroots level is essential to maintaining a sustainable company. Clothing comes into play when we consider the ‘cost’ to nature that occurs as a result of aspects like production, life span, and transport – up to ten percent of all greenhouse gas emissions originate from the fashion industry. The obstacle we now face is keeping the journey our designs make from studio to customer as low-impact as possible.
Even when it comes to dispatching our clothes within the UK as a small business, the challenge of lessening our ecological impact is still ever-present. One way we can achieve this is by counteracting the unavoidable environmental cost of transporting goods. The most effective and direct method is by off-setting our emissions with reforestation. We’ve chosen to introduce Treeapp to our process, a company that plants trees worldwide as a part of localised community efforts to absorb carbon from the atmosphere and regenerate degraded areas of woodland. Each project they undertake looks to put right issues native to the area, whether that be large-scale logging operations in Peru, wildfire damage in Brazil, or urban expansion in Mozambique - to name just a few.
Sustainability as an act of rebellion
We began this initiative on Black Friday of 2021. The event itself gives little thought to how the sheer influx of limited-time sale prices, plastic packaging, and cheaply-produced items can be a massively harmful way of buying. As a sort of gentle rebellion, we decided to retroactively donate to Treeapp on behalf of every order since the first of January, rounding our 293 orders up, and planting three hundred trees in Madagascar to reverse the effects of slash-and-burn practises that have destroyed more than 90% of its original forests and brought forth the demise of many native species. The effects of reforestation here are beyond significant. The erosion of the natural landscape and the soil beneath not only affects the wildlife that grows upon it, but the Malagasy people too. Jobs are lost when the raw materials inevitably become exhausted, and Madagascar - already fraught with poverty induced by political instability - only suffers.
Considered and mindful action
The process of rehabilitation begins at the most basic level. The trees are either grown to seedling or sapling size in their carefully-chosen partners’ nurseries (depending on the needs of the local forests) and continually monitored to make sure they’re growing healthily. We know that all of this occurs through Treeapp’s dedication to documenting their work through footage and reports, and through the geolocation and sampling practises that confirm the respective success of each and every project they undertake.
What’s crucial to our choice of company is transparency. No data from brands or individuals is sold - there is no ulterior motive. Treeapp holds itself accountable for every project, every local community involved in planting, every single effect and implication of replenishing areas damaged by big business. Alongside reforestation work, they provide a percentage of agroforestry species for community use, to make sure local people in the area are as involved as possible, and still have a source of sustainable materials without affecting the newly-planted forests. Working with local farmers to only plant endemic and native species and forbidding monocultures (large areas cultivated with a single type of plant) ensures Treeapp are not blindly treading on pre-existing wildlife and local infrastructures in a bid to green-wash operations. Instead, holding a mirror to our own ethics, every individual act is considered and responsible.
Making sustainability accessible
Nadinoo designs and hand-crafts clothes that will live with you; sacrificing the life of the natural world with unsustainable practises doesn’t have to be a consequence, or a ‘necessary evil’. We are now at a crucial stage in minimising our harm to the earth as people – it is no longer something that we can let pass us by with a clear conscience. The only way to progress is to challenge business as usual, and we’d like you to feel confident you’re shopping with a company that enables you to have a personal input into the progress that defines the way we desire to move forward - with kindness and care to a planet that allows us the materials to realise our designs.
Lessening our ecological impact is not a static process with a beginning and end, but an ever-evolving effort to better ourselves, and ensure we have a future in which to continue creating beautiful things.