The word ‘Sustainable’ is thrown around a lot these days. The meaning has become a bit more wishy-washy and just a social media buzzword. However, we don’t want to lose sight of what makes a business truly sustainable.
From the beginning, Sammy (the founder of Tide + Seek) knew she wanted Tide + Seek to be a sustainable brand.
As an avid surfer, Sammy has been fortunate enough to have visited some of the most beautiful and remote parts of the world! She quickly began to notice the amount of rubbish and plastic waste in our oceans and along beaches.
She wanted Tide + Seek to offer environmentally improved products that would make use of plastic waste found in the world's seas and along shorelines.
At Tide + Seek we pride ourselves on being sustainable through the whole process of making our swimwear, from the production and the treatment of the factory workers to the packaging we use to send out orders.
In this blog post, we share the ethics that makes us a proud sustainable swimwear brand and we also cover how we would like to improve, to enable us to become more sustainable where possible!
Our Fabrics
All our swimwear and active wear is made using REPREVE; a fabric made from 100% recycled ocean-bound plastic bottles. Unlike virgin fibre, making REPREVE emits less greenhouse gases, conserves water and energy in the process.
Fun Fact: 1 swimsuit is made from 5 recycled plastic bottles whilst our gorgeous yoga surf leggings use 25 bottles! How amazing is that! REPREVE themselves have just celebrated recycling over 30 billion bottles.
As for the vibrant lining of our swimwear, this fabric is Carvico Vita. An Italian fabric company making sustainable techno-fabric, made of an ECONYL® regenerated Nylon that turns waste problems into fashion.
On top of that all our patterns are digitally printed onto the fabric using less water used and creating less waste.
Manufacturing
During the early stages of Tide + Seek, we spent three months in Bali visiting different swimwear factories. We wanted to work with a manufacturer that had good working conditions for their employees and we wanted to see it with our own eyes.
We wanted a factory that valued their staff and had a enjoyable work environment - finally we found one which ticked all the boxes!
The factory we make our swimwear with was awarded a tax-free licence by the Indonesian Government as a reward for being the only factory to follow all of the Indonesian Manpower regulations on the treatment of staff, waste disposal & water treatment.
Treatment of Employees:
- All of the factory's employees are paid well over the minimum wage & receive 13 months salary a year; the extra month paid when they take their yearly leave.
- They provide free medical insurance covering doctors’ fees, prescribed medication & hospitalisation to each employee, their spouse & up to three children.
- Every lunchtime, they provide one freshly cooked healthy meal.
- Overtime is up to the individual’s choice to work or not. They pay double wages for the first 1.5 hours & three times for additional hours worked.
- Their facility is fully air-conditioned on par with any western establishment.
Our Packaging
We only use biodegradable postage bags to ship all of our orders. To keep all of our swimwear separated and clean each item is folded into a "I'm Not Plastic" polybag by Avani Eco. The polybags are environmentally friendly compostable bio-cassava bags. These bio-based alternative bags will become fertiliser for your plants if you pop them in your home compost.
Not to mention if a customer for some reason needs to send back one of our products then instead of using another shipping bag, the extra glue line on the one we sent to you enables the customer to reuse the bags.
We also send our swimwear out in another eco protective layer, our turquoise cotton bags. These can be used in many ways: perfect to keep your swimwear protected whilst in transit too.
What we would like to do in the future...
We are always looking for even more ways we can make our business as eco-friendly as possible.
As our swimwear is made in Bali, we would like to find ways to reduce the carbon foot print of transporting our collections across to us here in the UK.
One way we are looking into is Sea Freight, which with the right company can be a carbon neutral approach to transport our swimwear.
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We love our planet and looking amazing whilst doing all our favourite active hobbies or just laying on the beach! Tide + Seek is the perfect representation of that.