Your order removed 17.4 kg of CO2!! Here's what we've been busy with

Hi all!

I hope all you BREATHTAKING people are doing well!

We’d like to create a sort of interactive community and keep close ties with all of you so we can share updates on our work, the development of Neomachi towards a virtual city (more on this later), carbon offsetting progress, ideas for the future and new designs. We are a grassroot company of Japanese/Cyberpunk enthusiasts – and we’d like to remain that so keeping open a dialogue is important for us.

First, we’re super hyped that there’s so many like-minded people out there and we want to thank you for helping us double our sales in January compared to December, which also enabled us to double our sustainability efforts. As you maybe know – leaving the world a little better than when we arrived in it is an important goal for us. This means that our growth always will always lead to the same increased growth of our contributions to good causes.

Apparently, after doing quite some research – there are a lot of “carbon offsetting” practices that claim that they offset even though they’re doing activities such as “forest management” instead of reforestation. Even though protecting of existing fauna is important, we don’t think this leads to a Carbon Net Zero, let alone a Net Positive as the trees are already existing. In our research, we found that even a lot of big companies, such as IKEA, claim to be carbon offsetting this way.

For this reason, we’ve decided to only give to the Gold Standard, which can be viewed, as the name implies – the standard within sustainability efforts. Commodities from FSC, Fair Trade, Better Cotton and others are analyzed whether their claims of carbon reduction are valid and afterwards certified. This allows companies to credibly report lower emissions to their GHG footprint when purchasing these certified lower-carbon commodities.

As you can see, for January, we’ve been able to offset 13 tonnes of CO2. Your order has offset 17.4kg! In comparison – Eurostat estimated that the average yearly footprint per person (in Europe) is 7 tonnes. We’ve given to the following sustainability efforts:

• Terraclear: Clean water access for families in Laos
• 22,5 MW Wind Power Project in Rajasthan, India
• Cleaner, Safer Water in Cambodia
• Climate+ Portfolio: Variety of projects
• Improved Cookstoves in Guinea
• Safe Water Access in Rwanda
• Solar Cooking for Refugee Families in Chad
• The Nica forest High Impact Reforestation Program

Personally, I am very hyped – and I hope you are as well. We think it’s odd that not every clothing brand does this, and especially the big brands that can afford to do so, as clothing manufacturing is an environmentally unfriendly, water intense process unfortunately. With our December offset we’ve become Carbon Neutral, and with our January offset we’ve already become Carbon Positive.

Let’s keep kicking ass together and keep making the world a better place month by month!

//Rosalie