Sustainable Business

Modern, sustainable, low-carbon home sewing solutions for the fast fashion consumer

Digital Pattern Library aims to combat the crisis of fast fashion whilst finding a creative solution to our consumerism habits. We provide tutorials, garments and design ideas for our customer who can download their wardrobe and equipped with the skills we teach, wear clothing that fits them perfectly. Born as a rebellious answer to the exclusivity of the fashion industry, our designs scream high-end and are a fraction of the cost – without the moral questioning!

 As our patterns are digital, there is no dead stock – garments are produced as and when the customer desires. Patterns are printed at home with methods saving ink and paper and unlike eCommerce stores, there is no CO2 from postage or packaging resulting in a low carbon footprint. We also vow to give our ‘scrap busting’ templates away for free to combat the 15% of global textile waste that ends up on the cutting room floor.

 Given our consumer makes the articles of clothing themselves after falling in love with our aesthetic, they also go on to treasure their garments more than the ‘throw away’ apparel created in the cheap, fast fashion culture. This approach to consumer psychology aims to address the 3 year average lifetime of a piece of clothing, instilling appreciation into the craftsmanship of garment construction and allowing our customer to truly appreciate the item they have sewn.

 As our library grows, so does our tribe and in turn the education we promote around sustainable fashion and textiles. Having only launched in September 2018, the business has created a passive income due to the digital nature of the products and enabled fashion to be accessible for all.

Quality, provenance and sustainability at the heart of gin making

Dyfi Distillery has meticulously audited its business to see where it could maximise locality in every sense. Blending absolute quality with provenance was always at the heart of our offer, but we wanted to get into the detail of every aspect of what we do ‘behind the scenes’ from a sustainability point of view too.

Gin production traditionally relies heavily (often entirely) on imported plant materials (botanicals), and is a heavy energy user through both production and cleaning, and also waste materials are often not recycled with an environment-first approach: so operations may not be a very environmentally friendly on many fronts.

The distillery has (a) moved to a green energy supplier whose nearest generating station is less than a mile from the distillery (b) increased the proportion of locally foraged botanicals we use to further cut down food miles (c) expanded its relationship with a local nature reserve so that their botanical ‘waste’ is increasingly used in our production (d) replanted juniperus communis, so by reintroducing a core gin botanical to the area, it will further reduce shipping needs in future (e) made significant investment in equipment which can recycle hot water produced by distillation (in the cooling process) in post-production cleaning, which has cut down our hot water usage by over 50%. (f) worked with a partner to design an open-system recycling method for waste by product (feints). Feints are commonly removed from a distillery to be incinerated.