🌱 ONE Essentials are designing for circularity - here are 10 resources to help your brand do the same.
Featuring Nudea, Dame, Finisterre, Jude's and more...
Happy Monday!
This week, we’re taking a look at how FMCG brands can be more circular. We cover:
ONE Essentials: Designed for ‘Everyday Radicalism’ in 5 key ways.
10 resources to catalyse circular design within your brand.
In case you missed it: 🌱 Circularity: Buzzword or Business Model? Featuring Origin Coffee, Kaffe Bueno, First Mile and more...
Before we dig in, we’d love to ask you a quick question: Which part of this newsletter do you find most useful? Please click on your answer:
> Good News Last Week
🎯 B Corp certified underwear brand Nudea launched Bra-Cycle, a recycling scheme with Terracycle to encourage people to recycle their bras through a discount in exchange for their old bras.
🎯 Jude’s published their latest Impact Report for 2021. Their focus on carbon cutting led to an achievement of 20% reduction in carbon intensity as part of their target to reduce their carbon intensity per litre of ice cream by 43% by 2030.
🎯 Dame and Finisterre announced the launch of their reusable period pad set for World Ocean’s Day, to combat the single-use period products that a vast majority of end up in the world’s oceans.
🎯 Fever Tree is joining forces with All Bar One to invest in Earthwatch Group’s Tiny Forests movement, aiming to boost biodiversity in the UK’s urban areas via 150 ‘tiny forests’.
⭐️ Patagonia announced a lifetime partnership with The Albanian Government (Albanian Ministry of Tourism and Environment) to protect the Vjosa River, the last big wild river in Europe through increasing the protection to level IUCN Category II: National Park. Patagonia in collaboration with EcoAlbania, Riverwatch and EuroNatur will organise a panel of lcoal and international experts to draft a framework for the park.
⭐️ DHL announced, in partnership with M&S, that 20 new trucks powered by biogas to be added to their fleet as part of their low-carbon transport commitments. The trucks will be used for transporting M&S goods, working towards their net-zero operations by 2035 Plan-A strategy.
⭐️ Heinz in partnership with Tesco have announced their collaboration with packaging experts Plastic Energy, Sabic and Berry Global to produce a recycled soft plastic Heinz Beanz Snap Pot. The new pots have 39% recycled content, are made using soft plastics collected from Tesco customers and are kerbside recyclable after use.
⚡️ Fast food brands McDonalds, Dominos Pizza, Yum! Foods (KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell), Restaurant Brands International (Burger King) and Chipotle Mexican Grill have set or committed to set science based targets, funded by an $11 trillion investment from FAIRR and Ceres.
⚡️ The Sustainable Marketing Compass launched. It’s a strategic framework that helps companies embed sustainability at the heart of their marketing, in alignment with the Sustainable Development Goals.
> Click on each link to read more.
> Brand Spotlight
ONE Essentials: Designed for ‘Everyday Radicalism’ in 5 key ways.
The problem with pants? It's the one thing we all wear. It’s high use, high wear, must sustain multiple wash cycles, consistent wear over months and years and it has no resale market. On top of that, the underwear market is filled with cheap, short-lived low-quality products and synthetics that take hundreds of years to decompose. No good for us and no good for the planet.
This, quite frankly, broken model, led to the creation of ONE Essentials in 2020. Built with the environment & the end of life phase in mind, ONE Essentials aims to be truly good in every aspect of business. Here are five ways they do this & where we believe other brands can learn from too.
1. A truly circular model
The ONE Essentials team have designed their products with the end in mind - their circular business model directly addresses the environmental cost of the fashion industry. Beginning with high quality materials, increased longevity through the clevercare system, dyes and materials that are safe for recycling and remanufacturing and a 100% take-back scheme (they’ve worked with Reskinned on this), waste is eliminated from the product before it is even produced.
2. Supply Chain Transparency
One of the most unique elements of One Essentials is the focus on their supply chain transparency. Every product has a ‘traceability’ score - letting you know exactly where and how your product has got to you. Additionally, their suppliers are analysed & audited, with the results publicly available on their website.
3. Material & Sourcing
One Essentials reduce the use of raw materials in their products from the offset without compromising on quality. The t-shirt range is made from 50% recycled & 50% organic cotton, grown with no chemical pesticides or insecticides. This blend not only reduces the pressure on finite, virgin materials, but is also significantly lower impact too. And the elastic in the underwear range is made from a biodegradable elastane rather than conventional plastic.
4. Positive Packaging
As impact doesn’t just belong to the product itself, One Essentials have also invested in the most low impact, sustainable packaging possible - from dissolvable, non-toxic garment bags & sugar cane stickers, to FSC certified boxes & no additional in-box collateral.
5. Impact Measuring
Every purchase & every product has an impact. And whilst many believe businesses are predominantly responsible for driving the sustainability agenda, your choices make an impact too. That’s why, every order comes with a product specific impact receipt, so you can see just how powerful your pants really are.
On top of all of this, One Essentials donates 1% of all sales (yes, sales, not profits) to the OR Foundation, partnering to take action to address overflowing textile waste, dangerous working conditions and effects of fashion on climate change.
What can other brands learn from One Essentials? Our top three takeaways:
Think bigger than your immediate impact. Your impact starts at the growing of the material or ingredient, and really, never ends.
Don’t settle for ‘normal’. We need more radical thinkers, pioneers, innovators. Just because something isn’t BAU now, doesn’t mean it won’t be in the future.
Being a genuinely good brand is far more important than ‘looking’ good. Partnerships with charities, brands and other companies that are on the same mission is the most effective way to drive change.
Support ONE Essentials via their shop:
> Quick Take
10 resources to catalyse circularity within your brand.
Current models of consumption are broken. With continuous new trends, new items, unethical production practices, exploitative supply chains and more. It is estimated that 92 million tonnes of textile waste is created globally every year - the equivalent of a bin lorry full of clothes ending up in landfill every second. And by 2030, this is set to rise to 134 without urgent action.
More and more brands are realising the necessity of circular design both in their products and supply chains, and the benefits could be huge. Reportedly, the circular economy is ‘an opportunity that could deliver benefits of €1.8 trillion in Europe alone by 2030’. To achieve this, businesses of all kinds and sizes need to find ways to capture, deliver and keep circulating value. Inspired by ONE Essentials, here are our recommended resources to help you catalyse your circularity journey:
For fashion brands:
What: The Jeans Redesign Guidelines
Why: Used as a starting point for the fashion industry to design and make products aligned with the principles of a circular economy.
Adoption: Companies from GANNI to Good American have participated, with some like Primark facing criticism for their implementation of the guidelines. Launched in March 2019, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation published an update detailing the barriers and innovation gaps found in the first two years of its use.
What: ASOS x Centre for Sustainable Fashion Circular Design Handbook
Why: Building on ASOS’ and CSF’s multi-year collaboration (which started in 2018), it also includes the Ellen MacArthur Foundation via its Make Fashion Circular initiative.
Adoption: ASOS has implemented these strategies, and whilst the fast fashion giant has a lot further to go, each strategy details how it can be applied in the design process - a tool that could be useful for other fashion brands.
What: Circularity for fashion and textiles businesses (Guide)
Why: Specialists from WRAP aim to demystify what circularity means for fashion & textile businesses, including actions you can take to embed circularity into your business.
For food & drink brands:
What: The Big Food Redesign
Why: In the EU and UK, 40% of agricultural land is influenced by the top 10 FMCGs and retailers. This report and set of concepts charts the necessity for a more circular food system.
What: Food Packaging vs Waste
Why: A white paper digging into mega-trends in the food packaging sector, and some key solutions for brands.
What: Surplus food redistribution labelling guidance
Why: Produced by WRAP, the Food Standards Agency and Defra, it aims to ‘increase the amount of food made available by food businesses for redistribution and accepted by recipient organisations’ by digging into labelling and food storage requirements.
What: Reuse - Rethinking Packaging
Why: From the New Plastics Economy team at Ellen MacArthur Foundation, it’s a framework to better understand reuse models - mapping a total of 69 reuse examples.
For any brand:
What: Circular Economy Procurement Framework
Why: With the goal of helping companies ‘kickstart circular economy initiatives within their procurement process’, it gives an overview of different intervention points organisations can use to make their purchasing choices more circular.
What: The Circularity Deck
Why: Designed to be a ‘learning an organising tool for designers, entrepreneurs and managers’, it’s aim is to create a common language when looking at various circular strategies as a team.
What: Circular Business Model Design Guide
Why: Aiming to be a practical guide for business leaders to identify circular opportunities within their activities.
As always, our goal at Following the Footprints is to provide you with inspiration and tangible steps to take. Each resource could be your kickoff point into more circular business practices. We also suggest taking inspiration from any of these brands to boost your Monday motivation even further.
> In case you missed it
🌱 Circularity: Buzzword or Business Model?
Featuring Origin Coffee, Kaffe Bueno, First Mile and more...
> Follow up with…
Article: From Seed to Recycling Center: How Companies Can Enable a Circular Economy at Every Step
Article: 16 Sustainable Fashion Brands Leading the Circular Economy
Resource Collection: Systems Tools & Resources
Hi, just wanted to say keep up the great work. I find your updates really useful to keep on top of the latest sustainability news in my industry and share inspiring and engaging topics/stories with my teams and colleagues. Thank you!!