As 2023 draws to a close, we’re reflecting on the impact you’ve helped us to make over the past 12 months, and looking ahead to some exciting plans and goals for 2024.
As well as starting our B Corp application process, which we hope to complete in 2024, this year together we have:
Saved 479 kg of waste from landfills
Our incredible BEEN London community and partners have saved 479 kg of waste from landfills this year, which is roughly the equivalent of 2,000 items of clothing. This takes our total over the past five years to almost 3 tonnes of waste diverted from landfills. Thank you!
Read more about our mission.
Planted trees in the rainforest
Through our partnership with Tree-Nation, and thanks to your orders, we’ve continued to plant trees in rainforests around the world, helping to capture 163 tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere and reforest 1.8 acres of rainforest. This includes the Peruvian Amazon, where we support a Peru-based NGO called Camino Verde, which is working to manage the careful balance between reforestation and local people’s livelihoods.
Read more about our forest.
Created only 45 kg of offcuts - which will be recycled
We take a zero-waste design approach when creating our beautiful accessories, which means we produce almost no waste during the production stage. By working with recycled materials that come on a roll, rather than working with leather hides, and thinking cleverly about how we will cut our designs - we’re able to drastically reduce the volume of offcuts that we create compared to the industry standard.
This year, we've collected all of the offcuts from our workshops so that we can measure our waste and then recycle it. In the entire past year of production, we’ve only created 45 kg of offcuts while making our bags - and we have exciting plans for what we are going to do with these offcuts so watch this space!
Read more about our design approach.
Pushed the boundaries of recycled materials even further
This year we went even further on our use of recycled materials. Recycled materials often need to be mixed with virgin materials to give them strength and bind them together. It’s always our aim to work with the highest possible recycled content, aiming for a minimum of 70% recycled content across our materials, and this year we are so excited to have been able to introduce our first 100% recycled cotton.
Read more about our materials.
Collaborated with some incredible material innovators
We’re always excited to discover new material innovations, and this year we continued to pioneer the use of recycled materials, working with new materials in development that are not yet commercially viable. We supported their development as the product partner to ready these new innovations for commercial use.
In 2023, we continued our partnerships with TreeKind, Pre Loved and XYZ Exchange, while also starting work with two new material innovators that we’ll be sharing more in the new year.
Read more about our innovation work.
Introduced new limited edition collections
This year we have partnered with the incredible soil-health pioneers, the Land Gardeners, as well as social enterprise Project ReGo to design and create some beautiful new limited edition collections.
We’ve also been working hard on a very exciting new collaboration with a fashion brand launching very soon!
Discover our collaborations with The Land Gardeners and Project ReGo.
Launched new circularity initiatives
We’re always looking for new ways to extend the life cycle of our bags. This year, we extended our repairs programme to offer our care and repair service with The Seam, and also collected preloved handbags of any brand to donate to Smart Works - an amazing charity that empowers women who need help getting into work by providing them with high-quality clothes, bags and one-to-one interview coaching.
Soon we’ll be launching a new initiative for the resale of our used bags. Stay tuned!
Read more about our approach to circularity.
Looking ahead to 2024…
We have lots of exciting community events planned for 2024, including canal clean-ups, insightful panel talks, as well as drinks and shopping events.
Thank you for being a part of our journey and supporting our vision of a world without waste.
