Did you know that one textile factory generates on average 60,000 lbs of textile waste, a week?

Though we can’t say denitively how much of that is sent to landfill, burnt, or sold to third party markets, we can say how much we divert when we bulk order fabrics for a product, or collaborate with others on a product. Take Microsoft. For their Tech Ed 2012 conference, we diverted more than 25,000 yards of perfectly usable and water resistant polyester fabric from fabric purgatory, making durable, "ooh" and "ahh" inducing Kasum backpacks in the process.

Note: For every collaboration, we provide detailed stats on fabric waste diversion, water savings, and carbon avoidance. Nicely useful for your CSR metric meeting and marketing needs. Go here if you’d like to explore collaboration.

Speaking of, where do we get the excess textiles we use for our products?

Increasingly, it comes from companies like yours, contacting us to see if we can do something with the excess you find yourself with. Or, when we have something specic in mind for a certain product, we seek it out. We then aim to build ongoing relationships  with factories and companies, creating a reliable source of materials to work with. For each fabric, we put it through rigorous testing to make sure it meets our high standards for quality, durability, shrinkage, color fastness, and that certain indenable "mmm"  factor (i.e. it plays well with other fabrics and will make you look good.)

Why is there so much excess, you wonder?

Thanks for asking! Sometimes the source is obvious, like what’s left after cutting out the pattern for an item. Or, fabric might not match the specied color of the designers. Or, the pattern may have been printed incorrectly. When it comes to leather, it could be from scraps cut from the source hide, or that it has bug bites, scratches, or uneven colors. It can also may happen because of the fickleness of the market/store buyers - Fabrics are made in anticipation of an agreed on order, and sometimes it gets reduced/eliminated last minute. Drat! That’s where LOOPTWORKS comes in, working it’s creative magic on all that yardage of goodness.

What does LOOPTWORKS, do with your excess?

It’s true, while we aim to minimize it, even we generate some excess. (shhhh!) However, we do try and find a use for the excess we create. For example, it’s gone into the padding of things like our Noll messenger bag and Kasum backpack. It’s also shown up in clothing, adding additional stretchability, durability, or comfort in key points.