Waste Not – The Zero Waste Collection
We at Nena & Co. are passionate about sustainability within the fashion industry. Our One of A Kind Guatemala Collection gives new life to the most beautiful vintage Huipiles and Cortes, which are traditional clothing worn by the Guatemalan people. The Artisan Collection and Heritage & Society Collection create new fabrics that are woven by talented Master Artisans. All three of these collections are part of Nena & Co.’s Ecosystem of Sustainability. In addition to these collections, we’re striving to be more conscious of our waste and would like to implement zero waste into our production model.
The Zero Waste Logic
Did you know that the clothing and textile industry is among the largest polluters in the world, and an estimated 1 million tons of textile waste is dumped into landfills each year? Nena & Co. forgoes big machinery and typical manufacturing methods to create our textiles in order to minimize our carbon footprint and provide sustainable work for Artisans around the world.
With any production of new fabric comes excess materials in the manufacturing process. Zero Waste is a philosophy and design principle that aims to eliminate waste rather than ‘manage’ waste. In this “whole system” approach, Zero Waste encourages the redesign of resource life cycles in order to reuse all products and to eliminate waste sent to landfills, incinerators, and the ocean.
To continue our Ecosystem of Sustainability, I’d like to introduce the Zero-Waste Collection from Nena & Co. Thoughtfully curated, these new designer pieces and our zero-waste policy are derived from repurposed materials, leaving a smaller footprint on our planet.
Preventing Excess Waste
Over the years we have evolved and started to produce our own lines of textiles with custom patterns and color combinations, creating signature fabrics like Baja, Moonlight Orchid, and Sedona.
These fabrics include a variety of colors and patterns, so the color and appearance of a bag depends on its fabric “placement”. Sometimes we are asked about producing bags with a uniform placement and no variation, but this would cause a tremendous amount of textile waste. Instead, most of our Artisan bags are created with a variety of placements.
We also prevent this type of waste by designing more easily repeated patterns, and colors that can be placed in our products in a variety of ways. Additionally, we are designing in smaller, consecutive patterns to reduce the amount of negative space which ends up as waste.
In addition to this and to continue our Ecosystem of Sustainability, I’d like to introduce the Zero-Waste Collection from Nena & Co. Thoughtfully curated, these new designer pieces and our zero-waste policy are derived from repurposed materials, leaving a smaller footprint on our planet.
The Zero Waste Collection
Regardless of how purposeful we are in our ongoing initiative to develop intentional fabrics with zero waste and prevent disposal of fabric off cuts, some waste is inevitable from new and previous fabric runs. After a while, these fabric remnants add up! This collection takes these excess fabric pieces and combines them to create a single product. For example, a fabric piece of Luna can be combined with Luna II to create a beautiful new bag.
Thank you for supporting our sustainability efforts, and we invite you to join us in loving our planet!
Warmly,
Ali
