How Everlane makes $68 eco-conscious jeans
Retailer’s search for factory led to Vietnam site, a top sustainable denim facility
NEW YORK— Denim production is a “dirty business,” says Michael Preysman, chief executive officer of fashion e-tailer Everlane Inc. He’s not wrong. Chances are, those jeans you’re wearing produced 44 pounds of carbon dioxide and took up to 10,000 litres (2,700 gallons) of water to make, much of it ending up in waterways, along with toxic dyes and chemicals deployed in making denim.
The desire to do better is why, last month, Everlane embarked on its biggest endeavour to date: an ecoconscious jean. It’s the next step in the brand’s journey of radical transparency.
Everlane’s $68 (U.S.) price tag sits well in the quality green-jean mar- ket. L.A. brand Reformation’s range of sustainable jeans costs from $118 to $168, Patagonia Inc.’s jeans retail from $99 to $119, Seattle-based Source Denim LLC’s Ethical Raw Jeans for men cost $139, while Swedish brand reDEW, whose jeans will soon be available online, has just debuted jeans in a limited number of U.S. cities, ranging in price from $150 to $195.
As with its bag factories in China, Everlane works hard to find the right factories at the right price, allowing for the disclosures that are going down so well with customers. For those $68 jeans, the “true cost,” according to the brand, is $28, including $7.50 for labour and $12.78 for materials. Everlane’s markup runs from double to triple, compared to an industry standard that ranges from five to six times costs.
If Preysman were to start it all again, denim would be Everlane’s second product, after t-shirts, but he says it took him two years to find a manufacturing facility with the right eco credentials. Typically, he says, “factories take advantage of inadequate regulations and dump contaminated water directly into the environment,” with denim manufacturers being particularly egregious offenders.
A damning Greenpeace report in 2010 detailed how Xintang, the “Jeans Capital of the World,” was polluting surrounding waterways in China’s Guangdong Province. “The smell is putrid and unbearable, and any skin contact results in itching and even festering,” the report said, with satellite images of dark, disturbing indigo runoff in the Pearl River. “Though villagers once fished and drank water from the river, now they dare do neither of these things and must pay for tap water.”
Preysman’s search eventually led to Saitex International Dong Nai Co. Ltd., a modern manufacturer surrounded by rainwater-filled pools and spouting fountains in Bien Hoa, southern Vietnam.
“They set incredibly high standards by recycling 98 per cent of their water to a drinkable state, air-drying the denim and turning the excess denim waste into bricks made for affordable housing,” he says.
Saitex’s president, Sanjeev Bahl, who also sits on the board of directors for the Sustainable Apparel Coalition, has been a vocal force for change.
Unhappy with the apparel industry’s practices — it’s second only to oil as the planet’s worst industrial polluter — Bahl built a LEED-certified (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) operation considered one of the world’s most sustainable denim-manufacturing facilities, thanks to incredible efficiencies.
Aclosed water system and jet washing machines lose only .4 litres of water per pair of jeans through evaporation; typical commercial machines waste as much as 1,500 litres per pair. Rainwater harvesting further minimizes water usage, while a five-step filtration process separates water from contaminants.
After they are cut, sewed and washed, Saitex jeans are mostly airdried before being finished in commercial driers. Renewable energy, including solar power and miniature windmills, reduces power usage by 5.3 million kilowatt-hours of power annually and cut carbon dioxide emissions by nearly 80 per cent. Any remaining industrial sludge is mixed with concrete (to prevent seepage), shaped into bricks and earmarked for the local community. To date, 10 brick homes have been built.