The protection of our planet, its natural resources and biodiversity are at the heart Forivor and our unique concept is driven by a desire to enhance and build upon children's innate love and appreciation of nature. Our designs both inform children about nature and encourage the development of their creativity, with the belief that in the future we will need the best creative minds to solve the many problems our planet faces.
We are constantly evaluating our operations and how we can reduce our impact and create positive change by talking to our suppliers, looking for new solutions and considering the life cycle of our products.
Our commitments to sustainability are constantly evolving as we transform from a start up working out how to operate our business to being able to delve more deeply into the details of our supply chain and what we can change. As founders we commit significant thought and time in the day to day running of the business to ensure we are always doing everything we can to put the planet first. This is not without its challenges but we have detailed briefly below some of the ways we are already committed and will aim to update this and our journal as things progress but please get in touch if you have any questions.
- We only ever use organic (primarily rain-fed) cotton
- Our products are made by Macrofast in Tiripur India. They have a Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS) certified printing system with no water involved and very little fabric wastage. Their major source of power is a windmill. They provide housing for about 50% about of their workers, with free electricity and water, with plans to increase this to 100% in the coming years. During the Covid pandemic they paid 100% of the salary of their employees.
- Avoiding air freight wherever possible. We always ship by sea except for samples which can only be sent by air currently and occasionally if we are suffering severe production delays due to reasons beyond our control we sometimes ship a few items by air to enable our business to continue selling. As we find a better production rhythm we hope to be able to ensure we never need to ship stock by air and we are learning all the time how we can best achieve this.
- Reducing waste textiles in our supply chain through our ‘Perfectly Imperfect’ sales and using production waste to create our pouches and other products such as journals.
- Actively trying to remove all plastics from our supply chain and where possible choosing reusable solutions. Our stock arrives from India in cardboard boxes (currently with a plastic tie to secure them which we want to try and find an alternative solution for) with as little protective compostable wrapping as possible. We always re-use boxes wherever possible for larger customer orders and to ship orders to our stockists. We only use recycled paper tape to close our boxes.
- We always consider the versatility, durability and longevity of every product we create with the aim of ensuring the product will remain useful and in good condition for as long as possible and therefore reducing the need for multiple purchases.
- Evaluating the use of any other materials in our supply chain and assessing alternatives, for example we currently use recycled polyester as the filler for our quilted blankets. We are concerned about the micro plastics from the polyester and are currently working on samples with a different filler that does not compromise on the durability and feel of the product. In the meantime, although it is not the ideal solution the polyester is encased by the printed organic cotton, reducing the ability of micro plastics to exit into the aquifer upon washing. We would always advise to spot wash wherever possible and only wash in the washing machine when absolutely necessary, this reduces carbon emissions, increases the life span of textiles and reduces micro-plastics entering water systems.
- Carefully considering the carbon footprint of our digital operations. As a business we rely on imagery to sell our products but we are trying to reduce the amount of images we use where possible. We actively try to reduce the volume of emails in our inboxes and are working towards finding alternative solutions to cloud based storage for our filing systems which we know have a heavy carbon footprint.