HAN.D is an eco-design project born out of a passion for fashion and love for the earth. Getting dressed is necessary, doing so while expressing yourself is a privilege and doing it in an environmentally friendly way is a requirement. This is why we are seeking an increasingly sustainable balance that reconciles the needs of the individual with those of the environment: each garment is designed to respect the wearer's dynamism and to minimize its social and environmental impact. Our goal is to achieve a circular economy condition. We believe that this is only possible by establishing a community that moves forward following sustainable development, based on social and environmental relationships.
So here we are, aware that we share a passion for Fashion and a desire to have a positive environmental impact, and ready to share our progress and sustainability goals with you. Within the HAN.D brand, we have established four action areas that serve as the cornerstones of our sustainability strategy: customer protection, worker welfare and development, supply chain transparency, environmental sustainability of resources.
SUSTAINABILITY REPORT
CUSTOMER
PROTECTION
Customer protection is one of the pillars of our brand and we want to implement it through quality, transparency and a unique and personalized shopping experience. We have chose a short manufacturing process: the Made in Italy production allows us to guarantee high quality, the short distances between workers enable clear and precise product traceability, the attention and support in size selection and the direct involvement of the customer in taking action towards sustainability make the buying experience different from all the others. To support our stance, we choose to rely on two approaches. First, we regularly engage in the information process, as we consider knowledge an indispensable means of making informed choices. Secondly, we act as an instrument for environmental and social protection by planting a fruit tree in disadvantaged countries for each of the orders our customers place. In terms of our commitment to the future, we choose not only to maintain production stages in a geographically restricted area, but also to prefer suppliers and partners with OEKO-TEX Standard 100 certification, which guarantees compliance with precise and narrow social and environmental sustainability standards. We also set out to positively impact Bologna by involving individuals on the fringes of society in the manufacturing process.
WELLNESS AND DEVELOPMENT OF CURRENT WORKERS
We also acknowledge worker welfare and development as one of the pillars of the brand. We consider the geographical proximity of our employees to be of paramount importance. For it allows us to personally verify the working conditions of employees. This enable us to ensure management under fair, safe and healthy conditions throughout our supply chain. Our commitment and desire for the future is to create a space at the forefront of the HAN.D project for students and recent graduates who wish to intern in the industry. We strongly believe in the prominent role of Made in Italy fashion, which must become a promoter in the change towards sustainability. We believe in artisan crafts, which are learned with patience and dedication. Therefore, we choose to create a space where young people can experiment and become passionate about this industry.
RELATIONS WITH COWORKERS
Relations with coworkers and suppliers are one of the four founding pillars of the brand. It is crucial for us to partner with suppliers who share our vision of sustainability, accountability and transparency. During the selection phase of collaborating companies, certain requirements are verified, such as employees' working conditions and caution in waste managing. We want to build stable and lasting relationships with our collaborators in order to increasingly align our vision of sustainability and to establish trusting relationships leading to the setting of common goals. As for the future, we aspire to establish supply relationships with companies that recycle materials. We do not want a desultory supply chain; on the contrary, we want to create a circular production process. The eco-design has the goals of making the clothes easily recyclable: once they reach the end of their life with the help of our customers they can be collected and delivered to companies that are involved in the recycling of these materials. Our goal is to make these extremely important companies an integral part of our production process: we are committed to delivering and wish to source the fabrics for new collections from them.
ENVIRONMENTAL RESOURCES
SUSTAINABILITY
OBIETTIVI PER IL FUTURO
The last of the cornerstones of the HAN.D brand is environmental sustainability, which we seek to achieve concretely: each choice is made after carefully analyzing the impact of all the options we have. This is visible in the selection of materials, right from our first collection. In fact, we chose valuable fabrics that had been produced by large companies and been left unused, thus giving them new life in an effort to optimize resources and protect the environment. Should the number of orders grow to such an extent in the future that the use of production waste becomes impossible, we will move on to purchase Oeko-Tex Standard 100 certified fabrics specially commissioned and produced for our collections. In terms of production quantities and waste, we currently choose to combat overproduction through an extremely limited number of ready-to-wear garments. We aim to get to the point of making garments based solely on pre-orders, thus making the surplus and unsold of ready-made clothes null and void.
The same impact analysis approach involved an important choice regarding suppliers and workshops: although we had to forgo lower production costs, we chose to favor a well-localized production process that could be controlled, verified, and that reduced travel and pollutant emissions to an absolute minimum.
Packaging was also considered in the process: it was in fact carefully designed to protect the product but minimize waste.
The shipping boxes are made of 100% recycled and 100% recyclable cardboard, designed for long-term use. These boxes are durable and aesthetically pleasing due to the brand's distinctive pattern, so they are designed to become home/office containers in which to store iteams. We are sure that many of you have abandoned plastic bags and have switched to biodegradable bags, but from the latest studies we have been able to learn about the environmental impact they have both during production and disposal. The alternative that we at the HAN.D brand offer you is a long-lasting use of the objects: inside our package you will find a 100% Oeko Tex Standard 100 certified cotton shopper (a guarantee of material quality and worker protection ) that is reusable for a long time and quite far from the disposable approach.
The same sustainability-related cautions were adopted for the price tag: an often disposable item that temporarily highlights the brand name and the price. In the HAN.D project, the tag takes on a new value and becomes a symbol for our customers'concern for the environment: in becomes a bookmark, as its design brings to mind the tree we choose to plant for each order placed and invites every person to leave their mark on the world. Each tag is made by hand, in the Bologna with the stencil technique, employing a mold that can be used colors long periods of time, and water-based colors to protect the environment as much as possible.
One of our goals for the future is to make garments that can carry the Oekotex Made In Green label, which we believe is among the best guarantees of environmental sustainability, social sustainability and an important tool to help us calculate the environmental footprint of our production .
We want to conclude this sustainability report by sharing with you the brand's most impactful sustainable development goal: we want to be promoters of a circular economy process. The brand wants to act as a sustainable community together with its customers, suppliers and employees, throughout the product life cycle, to minimize their environmental impact and protect the planet.
It will start with eco-design at the garment design stage:
• Fabrics composed of only one type of fiber and minimal use of accessories, to facilitate garment disassembly and subsequent recycling;
• Materials that come with specific certifications, to protect those who take part in production.The next step is up to the customer, who will play a key role: once the garment has reached the end of its life, they will have the option of shipping it or taking it to one of the brand's collection points. This return will allows us to deliver our materials to companies that specialize in recycling new ones. The ultimate goal is to make new collections with recycled fabrics recovered from past ones.