6 Repurposed Materials for Sustainable Products
Thank you! Your purchase helps make a difference by diverting textile waste from the landfill. Keep scrolling to learn a little more about the history of each of the materials we use to make unique and special products.
Denim
All our denim material is sourced from cast off jeans! Did you know that producing denim is highly polluting
to the environment? Growing enough cotton for one pair of jeans requires upwards of 1,800 gallons! Denim is a high demand material, and approximately 1.2 billion pairs of jeans are purchased each year, which will later contribute to the 70 pounds of textile waste the average American throws away.
Because of these factors, it is important to divert denim waste from the landfill and give this material a second chance at life. Each denim piece made by Faithfully Yours is making sure that denim is not rotting in a landfill and instead is transformed into something useful and beautiful. Enjoy your unique, upcycled denim piece...and maybe consider skipping that new pair of jeans at the store.
Button Down Upcycles
Clothing donation centers such as Goodwill or Salvation Army are generally seen as a useful way to pass on unwanted clothes to others in your community. Unfortunately, with clothing consumption growing exponentially, there are just too many clothes for these charitable businesses to resell. Typically stores are only able to resell about 20% of what is donated, and the rest either ends up in the landfill anyway or is bought by for-profit recycling businesses.
From one discarded button down, the toddler button down dress and shirt sleeve pants uses up 85% of an entire shirt, and all the remaining buttons are saved for future projects and remnants used for either smaller products or repurposed as stuffing! Next time your child is wearing their button down upcycle, remember the potential in all the materials we consider waste.
Plastic Netting
Plastic is a major contributor to our waste crisis, not only because of the amount of plastic the gets thrown away, toxic chemicals, and energy used to produce it, but also because it never biodegrades, only breaking down into micro plastics that stay in the environment forever. One way to help reduce the amount of wasted materials is to find new uses for them.
Plastic produce netting is the perfect material to re purpose for the scrubby side of sponges. Instead of buying sponges made from new polyester or nylon (also non-biodegradable), these sponges instead use materials that already exist, therefore limiting the amount waste overflowing the landfills
Scrap Materials
Our mission to reduce waste extends to how we construct our products and limit the amount of material waste we throw away. 85% of all scraps are saved from all Faithfully Yours projects to use for future projects. Entire new products are designed specifically around scrap materials! Larger scraps are used to create unique patchwork textiles, or used for smaller projects. Scraps too small to make something with are shredded for stuffing.
Yarn
A large amount of craft yarn is made of synthetic fibers such as polyester or acrylic which are not bio-degradable, or cotton, which takes a huge amount of water to grow, as well as toxic pesticides (unless it is organic). In short, most yarn contributes to the plastic crisis, as well as other environmental impacts. Yarn is a common material for crafters to collect, but what happens when a crafter losses interest in the hobby, needs to reduce their supple, or simply has small amounts of remnant yarn they have no use for?
All Faithfully Yours crochet products are made using yarn remnants or "rescued" yarn that is donate or thrifted.
Rescued Materials
Many people have at one point in time taken on a crafting hobby, whether long or short term, and when interest is eventually lost, crafters can be left with unused/leftover materials they no longer want.
A large percentage of the materials used by Faithfully Yours, from fabric, zippers, buttons, yarn, elastic, etc are "rescued" materials salvaged or donated from overabundance or unwanted materials from crafters. This ensures that these materials get put to use instead of being thrown away.