The aim to be lower impact
Hopefully we are smart enough to realise that everything we do, screws something up.
As a company, we have to realise that.
There is no perfect clothing company.
Let's be honest with ourselves and with our customers about that.
What we are doing at howies is trying to find ways to lessen that impact.
Where we are now isn't where we want to be. But that will always be the case. As a company, we should always think that we can do it better.
It's nice to do organic cotton t-shirts, but the dyeing process isn't so nice. But that is now our focus to try and find lower impact ways of doing that.
We can't say that our products are fair trade because we are not convinced that there is a trusted set of guidelines to follow. So we make no such claim until we can be sure.
That has meant we have to write our own guidelines. For a tiny company that is some undertaking. How do you measure the air quality in a factory? What chemicals are good? What chemicals are bad? How much overtime is allowed? How much holiday should be given? To these questions and more, we will go find the answers. Then we will make sure our factories follow our common sense guidelines.
We are always looking for new ways to try to tread more carefully.
Because that is what we set out to do: to try and run this business in a low as impact way as we can.
If you have any ideas on how we can do it better, we are all ears.
