For us, it’s not enough to simply farm the cotton well, it’s got to be a beautiful process right from cotton to bottom! So we’re delighted to say that the factory we work with, Pratibha Syntex, (www.pratibhasyntex.com) have ethics and excellence sewn deeply into its core. Pratibha means talent, and as you’ll see below, they use every ounce of it to make sure our pants are as beautiful as they should be!

With almost every certification under the sun they go way further than most factories to ensure that they are able to look after both people and planet when making your lovely pants. This means that we are able to look after the following things:

Environment:
Over 90% of the water used in the plant is recycled and, thanks to a special desalination plant, the water that does leave the factory is even cleaner than it is than when it comes in! All dyes used are special low impact dyes and, in our pants, they are completely Azo free (so no carcinogens in our pants!) with no discharges into the environment. Energy used is all natural gas but thanks to efficiencies they have reduced consumption by 30% and continue to plant over 200,000 trees to offset their impact. They also have a very exciting waste cotton recycling programme that one day you’ll see in our pants!

Society:
As well as having set up two schools and a technical college they support another 90 schools and a variety of old age homes and orphanages in the surrounding area to ensure that they share the value that they generate with their neighbours. To their staff, as well as paying a living wage, they also provide free medical care, nutrition, housing, training opportunities and even self defense and yoga classes. Around the time we started working with them, Pratibha initiated the Women Empowered Project which today delivers better job opportunities, access to free medical facilities, skills training, and health care programs to over 2000 women. The goal of this work is to socially and economically empower as many as 700 new women every year! We’ll be with them every step of the way continually evolving their models to make them better and better each year.

In addition to the above, we’re continually working with them on new product development, extra special trims and even gorgeous new fabrics to make sure that the pants continue to be the best on the market!