Special Report


Did you see our topics on sustainability earlier in the year at Printwear & Promotion LIVE? Fear not, for Prama Bhardwaj, managing director of Mantis World, and Sarah Jupp, business development manager at Soil Association Certification, provide a helpful recap of what you may have missed.


Measuring our impact


Within this article, Prama Bhardwaj managing director of Mantis World, presents a quick guide to the benefits of organic and new technology that is helping to measure the impact of buying responsibly.


A what we do.


t Mantis World, we’ve always put environmental and social responsibility at the heart of


In the past few months, we’ve been overwhelmed by the number of companies asking us for advice and information on sustainability. Drawing from our experience over the last 15 years of using organic cotton and our involvement in many global initiatives, this is our quick guide to the benefits of organic and new technology that helps measure our impact of buying responsibly.


Where we are today 2019 was the year where we all accepted, we are living through a climate emergency. There’s more pressure than ever to do something about it, and the printwear industry is no exception. We now consume 400% more garments than 20 years ago, while more than a third of unwanted clothing ends up in landfill.


The most widely used fibres in our industry are conventional cotton and polyester. Conventional cotton uses a disparately high quantity of water, chemical pesticides and herbicides yet less than 1% of global cotton is organic. Polyester has a very high carbon footprint, and takes thousands of years to biodegrade, shedding microfibres which end up in our oceans and marine life. Recycled polyester reduces the carbon impact, however the other challenges of virgin polyester remain.


What can we do?


Sustainability can be defined as ‘focusing on meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs’. There’s currently no such thing as a completely sustainable product in our industry. Everything we produce has an impact, the best we can do is to minimise this through responsible


manufacturing and moving away from a throwaway culture.


There is no perfect or fully sustainable fibre, but we believe organic cotton manufactured according to GOTS standards can be an effective tool for the environmental and social challenges we face. Here’s why: ● No harmful chemicals are used across the entire supply chain, which is better for workers and consumers alike. ●Workers and farmers have safe working conditions, earning enough to be able to invest in their family’s futures. ● Organic cotton uses less water than conventional since it’s not intensively farmed and more likely to be rain fed. It also doesn’t contaminate the water table with chemicals and nitrogen-rich run off. ● Organic farming encourages stronger ‘living’ soil, more resilient to extreme weather such as flood or drought. It’s more natural, avoiding GM seed, artificial fertilisers and chemical pesticides.


Sustainability: The business opportunity


with organic certification Climate change and consumers are putting pressure on the textile industry to follow more sustainable practises – and fast. But there are simple solutions and commercial opportunities for printers to get on board with sustainability through organic textile certification. Here Sarah Jupp, business development manager at Soil Association Certification, explains more.


T printers.


here’s more demand for organic textiles, and every business involved in producing certified organic textiles must be certified – including


If you’re a printer that wants to trade certified organic textiles to other businesses, you need to be certified to an organic textile standard.


Obtaining certification provides assurance to your customers that your activities and products are meeting some of the highest available sustainable standards. But in the UK, only a handful of printers are certified organic, so whether you’re a screen printer, digital printer or apply heat transfer vinyls, grab the business opportunity and grow your business more sustainably now.


How much does it cost to certify?


These fees are from Soil Association Certification, which certifies to the Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS) and Textile Exchange’s Organic Content Standard (OCS). The annual fees start at £765 plus a recharge fee of around £100 to the standard owner. This covers your application,


| 32 | April 2020


inspection and licence. If you certify to both the GOTS and OCS standards, one of your licenses will be charged at a 50% discounted rate.


What are the benefits? When you certify, you will be joining a small number of printers who can offer customers fully certified organic products. You will also gain a lot of prestige by being able to advertise your responsible business credentials. Many customers will choose to contract a certified organic printer, even if they don’t need a fully labelled product, just to be sure their garments are certified organic and/or printed in an environmentally friendly way by credible printers. When you certify organic, you can also print onto certified/labelled products, sell them on with a certification logo present, and add your own licence number. By searching for this number on the relevant standard’s database, anyone can attribute your business to the product (rather than your supplier) – providing reassurance that your business and supply chain meets the highest standards for organic


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