Eco Policy

 
At Little Green Rock we have a few guidelines we use to keep ourselves in check and stay true to ourselves and our brand: 

 -         Make cool stuff that appeals to everyone, whether they are    environmentally concious, or not 

-         Make everything of the highest quality possible to keep it out of the landfill or recycling bin  

-         Use the most environmentally friendly materials and methods available  

-         Always look for a better way  

-         Maintain a balance between sustainability and profitability  

-         Donate to non-profit organizations we feel can make a difference  

-         Do no unnecessary harm  

Believe it or not, we’re not a bunch of militant tree huggers. I don’t think that I have ever attended a rally or protest (although I may well have and just thought that I was at a party), and I’m quite certain that I have never chained myself to a gate in the name of anything. I prefer my mountain bike but if I need to drive somewhere, I drive. Riding your bike to the beach with your board tucked under one arm might have been a rite of passage, but these days I check the surf in the van. I’m just assuming that you’re not viewing this website on a solar powered computer, right?  

Like most things in life, cutting down our carbon footprint isn’t about complete abstention; it’s about making sensible choices. When we started Little Green Rock we had no intention of being an environmentally friendly company, we just wanted to make a few t-shirts. It was just through poking around on the internet that we learned how much pesticide and fertilizer is used by the commercial cotton growers. You don’t have to be a tree hugger to know that polluting the planet with chemicals ain’t a good thing. We chose not to be a part of that and to find an alternative.  

Now, I had heard of organic tomatoes, bananas, avocados and even chickens, but I couldn’t get my head around organic clothing; it just didn’t sound like it would taste too good. Luckily, you’re not meant to eat organic clothes, you’re meant to wear them. We set out to find a supplier of organic cotton for our t-shirts (and by this time, hoodies as well) and found that there were actually quite a few choices. We had been researching and talking to organic cotton fabric suppliers for about a month and a half when a large, loveable, Scottish, tree hugging friend of ours asked us if we had heard of bamboo fabrics. I had bamboo in my garden, one of us had bamboo flooring and my mate said that he likes bamboo shoots with his sweet and sour chicken (Cantonese style, of course), but none of us had ever heard of bamboo fabrics. Our large friend produced from his bag a baby’s nappy made from bamboo and as soon as we felt the material, we were sold (on bamboo, not babies). Check our Why bamboo? page for more of the reasons we decided that bamboo was for us.   

Finding a great environmentally friendly fabric has only been a small part of our desire to keep our negative impact on the planet to a minimum. The dyeing process also had to be as eco friendly as possible; luckily, the bamboo takes very well to non-toxic dyes. The screen printing process, however, has turned out to be another kettle of fish. Printer after printer refused to even discuss the idea of using anything other than their normal, toxic inks and plastics. A few that tried to print on our bamboo using water based inks returned print samples so poor as to make a grown man cry. After a few months of hair-pulling, we eventually found a printer who not only shared our views on not trashing the planet, but went to great lengths to use the most environmentally friendly inks available; he also had experience printing on bamboo. The print samples came back and were met with universal approval. Score.  

Now that our clothes are being made in the most eco-friendly manner that we can think of (for the moment), our next hurdle will be reducing the carbon footprint we create by shipping our product to and from various places around the world. I think that this will be our biggest challenge; but it is a challenge that we enjoy. Trying to find a better way to do everything is proving to be great fun.   To go a step further and put our little money where our big mouths are, we have been a member of 1% For the Planet since day 1. If you have read down this far, odds are you already know about 1% FTP, if not, please check out the website or, better yet, grab a copy of a book called ’Let My People Go Surfing’ written by the founder of the organization; well worth a read. If you would like to know where Little Green Rock’s money goes and why we chose the organizations we did, drop me a line and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.