The aim of the circular economy is to minimize the waste of materials and energy by utilizing products as efficiently as possible and delaying their end-of-life as waste. Maintaining and repairing products, as well as recycling materials or reusing them in remanufacturing, are ways to prevent products from ending up in landfills and burdening the environment.
According to Sitra, recycling textile waste is problematic because the quality of natural fibers deteriorates during mechanical recycling. Processing textile waste requires a lot of manual labor. Therefore, it is especially important to try to delay textiles from becoming waste.
When it comes to clothing, for example, flea markets and second-hand shops are good practical examples of circular economy thinking.
And this is where Emmy comes into the picture!
Emmy’s selection consists of branded clothing. We are often asked why we have limited our sales to only certain brands. One of the main reasons is that a brand usually means quality. We at Emmy are not excited about fast fashion, which is produced on assembly lines in low-wage countries, usually in Asia. The aim is to produce as many clothes as possible, as quickly as possible, following rapidly changing trends, which means there are no resources to spare for quality. Unfortunately, the low price of fast fashion often comes at the expense of the environment and workers’ well-being.
Low prices easily tempt shoppers into impulse buying. Clothes are bought, worn a few times, and then discarded. The reason is often either quick boredom or the garment breaking. The goal of fast fashion manufacturers was never to make clothes that would last through multiple washes and years of use.
By selling or buying your clothes from Emmy’s online store, quality garments continue their cycle on a new owner. Unsold clothes that the seller does not want back after the sales period are donated to the Recycling Center or Karjalan Apu Ry. Broken and stained clothes are sent through us to textile fiber collection at Dafecor.
Hanna & the Emmy team
More information about the circular economy can be found, for example, on Sitra’s website: