You might have never thought about it, but even your sustainable purchase has a cost and impact. That is why fashion brand Asket wants us to skip sustainability and try responsibility, starting with knowing all the facts of the clothes we wear. Just like we wouldn’t put something in our mouth unknowing where it came from, we shouldn’t with our clothing.

Left example of impact receipt and right subjects of receipt. Photos by Asket.

Swedish fashion brand Asket is setting new standards within the fashion industry, with its ambitious goal of becoming 100% traceable, so that they can follow the garment through the whole production cycle, from raw material to finished product. To make sure that the cycle is sustainable Asket has to be transparent about the process, only then the garments are fully traceable. Knowing the full story of a garment allows both Asket and their customers to know the true cost in terms of labor and resources. With this in mind both parties are able to make better decisions.

The true cost of garments

Tracing all the materials in the fashion industry can be quite hard, which is why Asket worked together with the Research Institute Sweden for the past 2 years on mapping the true costs of their collection. The outcome is shared on the newly introduced Impact Receipt. On this receipt you can see how much CO2, water and energy the production of a garment costs. It also shows the water, CO2, and energy cost per wear and the number of expected wears for the particular garment. The Impact Receipt is not simply a proof of purchase, but an agreement that you understand the costs of your new garment. By making the customer aware of all these costs, Asket wants to move them to buy less and keep an item longer. We can’t simply shop our way to sustainability but instead have to become aware of the choices we make.

Communicating the right message

Asket was founded to create a wardrobe where all the garments get to be worn, adding personal value and meaning to each and every item. By cutting out the middleman, not following trends with the introduction of a permanent collection, and having no physical stores or wholesale options, Asket has allowed itself the time and opportunity to trace its whole supply chain. After the launch, Asket was still searching for a way to communicate and educate the consumers about the supply chain. It realised that the message needed to be packaged so that the environmental footprint becomes an integral part of the purchase receipt, thus creating the Impact Receipt. Making the garments fully traceable is only the first step for Asket. Starting out with full transparency, Asket is now moving towards analyzing the impact of the whole supply chain, with the final step being closing the loop.

Setting the standard

The Impact Receipt is part of Asket’s ongoing journey towards full transparency and a response to the growing customer awareness of the environmental impact of fashion. Asket hopes its Impact Receipt will move the fashion industry towards a more fixed output. Currently, it is impossible to create a traceable path within the time frame of seasonal collections. As of now, only part of Asket’s collection is covered with the Impact Receipt. However, it is setting the right example by collecting the impact information of every remaining garment. The goal is to have the entire collection fully covered by summer 2021.

Know your impact. Buy less. Keep it longer.

 

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Een bericht gedeeld door ASKET (@asket) op 24 Sep 2020 om 12:31 (PDT)

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