07/03/2020
Reducing waste is the theme for today.
The most obvious thing to talk about here is the substantial amount of fabric waste which is produced from cutting such large pieces of fabric for the wool beds. As you know I always make of much of this into bones as possible. However, there is still waste. The small piddly bits must go in the bin, but I have recently started to save the long strands for ribbons to use for present wrapping.
The fabric used in the insert of the beds is far too thin for the bones, so I have been saving all of this excess until I come up with a good solution for how to use it. I think possibly the best use of this fabric would be small jewellery bags, or reusable drawstring veg bags. This would of course be none Bramble related, but Iāll share if I decide to go ahead and sell some.
The other form of obvious waste is packaging: plastic bags, mailers, sacks etc. As I donāt have my own branded packaging, I reuse plastic bags to weatherproof outgoing parcels. Otherwise this packaging is put into a big cardboard box where it regularly gets repurposed.
Iām super conscious about making the effort to reduce waste which I create because Iāve learnt so much first hand about the vast amounts the textiles industry produces. The ways I try to reduce my packaging waste are to reuse what I can (plastic bags, cardboard boxes which my wool arrives in) for outgoing parcels. I use kraft paper tape instead of sellotape, my labels are always recyclable, and I avoid any plastic or polyester in my products. Thereās always room for improvement, and even today I learnt the corn starch sellotape is available, which I must look into (sticking on address labels requires see through tape)!