VAER is a Copenhagen-base startup, that has found a way how to give textile waste a second chance and turning it into awesome upcycled sneakers 👟😍🎉 Let’s find out more about the story behind VAER ⬇️
SEEING VALUE WHERE OTHERS SEE WASTE
The fast-fashion system has resulted in a major overflow of textile waste. VAER’s mission is to move to a more circular fashion industry, where they reuse textiles instead of wasting them. VAER believes that the discarded textiles deserve a second chance since most of the materials are perfectly fit for reuse in new designs.
VAER’S VALUES
- Circular Design
Circularity is at the heart of everything done at VAER. Not just in terms of upcycling textile waste, but throughout the whole lifecycle of their shoes. Every design decision is therefore made with the aim to create a shoe that can be recirculated at the end of its lifespan. - Low Impact Product
From using the already existing textile waste to carefully selecting suppliers that use non-toxic and less resource intensive materials. Every part of the shoe (from the soles to the laces) is chosen to create a shoe with as low an environmental impact as possible. - Social Empowerment
Socially responsible production is a given for VAER, and they want to go further by empowering people with the opportunities that the practice of upcycling represents. Through their upcycling workshops, VAER is building awareness and giving people the opportunity to be a part of the solution.
WHAT IS VAER DOING NOW
- Upcycled sneakers
VAER uses discarded textiles that are deemed unfit for reuse to make the sneakers. This gives each pair a unique story. By upcycling textiles, they are saving these precious resources from being wasted and minimizes the use of new textiles. - Upcycling workshops, learn to transform textile waste into unique fashion pieces.
The fashion industry is moving too fast. They want us to buy more and throw it away faster, just so we can follow their trends. At these upcycling workshops VAER is doing the exact opposite – they are slowing down and using what is already there. What fashion deemed as waste, VAER will help to transform into something that is unique and that can be treasured for many years.
- DID YOU KNOW…
The plastic microfibers from textiles, which represent around 1/3 of all micro-plastic in the ocean (Hubbub). What is microfibers? Every fabric sheds small pieces of fibers which are called microfibers. Microfibers can be natural (such as cotton, hemp, etc.) or synthetic and thereby categorised as microplastic (such as polyester, acrylic, etc.) It was found that a single fleece jacket could release as many as 250,000 plastic fibers per wash (Mermaid Consortium, Pirc et al., 2016).
The synthetic microfibers – microplastic – have a more negative effect on the environment as they take up to thousands of years to degrade (Trash Travels, Ocean Conservancy’s 2010 report). Washing clothes or just wearing it contaminates water bodies and even the air by releasing microfibers. They travel from washing machines to the ocean and can hereby enter the food chain, harming plankton and fish along the way and through these – they also end up in humans. However, they are not only contained in seafood such as fish and mussels (MERMAIDS consortium) but also in products like table salt and honey (Almroth, 2017).
We must be aware that there is not only physical but also a chemical impact, since the textiles are often treated using toxic chemicals (Henry et al., 2018). The industry is using more than 8000 chemicals in various processes of textile manufacture including dyeing, printing and water proofing. This toxic treatment of the fabrics, makes the microfibers even more “dangerous” and thereby cause a major threat to the environments that the microfibers are released into.
The industry therefore plays an important role in reducing this threat and simple steps such as minimizing their use of toxic chemicals to treat the clothes – is a great start. Another interesting thing they can do, is to conduct a controlled pre-wash of their clothes, since researches show a significant decrease in microfiber release within the first initial washes (Sillanpaa and Sainio, 2017, Almroth, 2017).