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Environmental and Social Practices
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Environmental and Social Practices
We try to make as little impact on the environment as possible by developing high-quality, long lasting products. In our search for performance and durability, we always opt for eco-friendly materials whenever possible and luckily, there is an increasing range of great new materials to choose from.
We will never compromise on the safety for a user of a Sweet Protection product but are always on the lookout for better and stronger materials with an eco-friendly approach. You can always feel safe when wearing any products from Sweet Protection. Here is more info on how we ensure it.
Sweet Protection is a part of Active Brands, and you find more details about how we address sustainability in our value chain, ensure due diligence practices and monitor focus areas at www.activebrands.com/sustainability
Factory Life
Making a secure and just work environment for our co-workers at the factories, is super important to us. To secure this, we follow the UN´s Universal Declaration of Human Rights and The International Labour Organization «ILO»´ regulations that involve: Equal pay between men and women, no child labour and no exceeding of normal work hours. All of our workers are entitled to overtime provisions, and to get breaks during their work days. Which yes, should be a given, but sadly not in this world.
We follow up on this by doing unannounced visits ourselves. But we also get help from our experienced friends in the non-profit organizations BSCI and IEH
IEH – Ethical Trading Initiative Norway
IEH gives us advice on which countries that are safe to produce in, what to look for when doing inspections and how to create efficient long-term goals. IEH has also helped us develop our code of conduct to meet the UN, ILO and our own regulations.
BSCI – Business Social Compliance Initiative
BSCI are helping us on inspecting factories, rating them from A to F. If one receives A or B, the factory is approved and will only be inspected every third year. Should the factory receive C, D or E however, inspections will be carried out every year to make sure they improve.
Sourcing and quality assurance
To be closer to our production, which mainly takes place in Vietnam, China and Myanmar, we have an office comprising 50 colleagues in Shanghai. They perform our inspections, secure the product quality and create important long-term relations with the factories.
Packaging
We wish there was a better solution to this, but packaging is never really eco-friendly (yet!). We have reduced the amount of plastic in our packaging to a minimum and try to use recycled plastic whenever possible. The goal is to have a new eco-friendly packaging in 2020. Meanwhile we urge you to recycle. On our side, we try to make up for creating all this waste, by paying qualified national recycling firms to take care of it in a sustainable way through The Green Dot System.
Fabrics in apparel
We produce a lot of our stuff from wool, which is super eco-friendly. When other materials are needed however, we do our best to secure that our products are 100 % free from bad chemicals. Partnering with solid suppliers like W.L. Gore and Associates and PrimaLoft gives us solid documentation and we share the same ambition for more recycled and sustainable fabrics.
REACH
We comply with the European Union´s
REACHregulations, that prohibit harmful chemicals. All of our materials are registered and evaluated to be on the safe side.
Random testing
All of our suppliers are committed to supply chemical-free products. Every 24th month we carry out random testing of every product category to control them.
100% Secure PVC
All products containing PVC is tested for the dangerous phthalate chemical, to guarantee that it doesn’t contain any before it is used in production. This way we secure that our PVC products, such as bags and rain wear, are one hundred percent safe to wear.
Antifungal and antibacterial treatment
We have phased out the use of antibacterial treatments of any kind. Why? Because the chemicals used to do so never decompose when they end up in sea, causing mass deaths of micro-organisms. Instead, we focus on new technology and design that makes the garments more breathable and dry.
Bluesign® System
Our main suppliers of fabrics are Bluesign certified. Which means, they only use safe input chemicals, monitor their air and water emissions and ensure worker safety so that the dyed fabric is safe for the end user, workers and the environment.
Recycled Polyester
A lot of training gear is made from polyester, which basically is plastic. We are currently working on replacing ours with recycled alternatives. There is far too much plastic in the world already, so we´re really excited about this and will keep you posted!
Non Mulesing Wool
To get that soft and silky feel to our wool products, we use wool from the finest merino sheeps in New Zealand and Australia. It's super important for us to know that the sheeps have been taken good care of, and that they haven’t been mistreated by the horrifying mulesing technique. To ensure this, we get our wool from the strictest controlled channels that have been created internationally. The certificates that follow, are the best assurances we currently have to make sure that our wool products are manufactured under good welfare conditions for the animals.
IWTO certificate
Secure that all partial shipments of wool, come from non-mulesing wool.
Certificate of Origin
Guarantees that all shipments of wool come from the certified non-mulesing wool suppliers in the actual production country, to the supplier in China.
Wool Spinning Certificate
Confirms that all garments produced by Sweet Protection production partners, are based on non-mulesing wool.
Sweet Protection has taken an active stand against mulesing and expect that this practice in raw material production soon will be history.
Fur free
We don't use any fur in our products.
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