Mini Rodini sustainability

A Sustainable Story by Mini Rodini

, by kids atelier, 7 min reading time

Mini Rodini StoryMini Rodini is a Swedish children’s wear brand that was founded in 2006 by illustrator Cassandra Rhodin as a tribute to all children, their imagination and sense that everything is possible. Mini Rodini takes children seriously with playfulness, meaning it is important that children too have clothes that match their own personality, mood and creativity. 

WHAT YOU BUY MATTERS

Our industry is the second largest polluter in the world. Together we use more water than any other, apart from agriculture, and are responsible for the unfair working conditions of millions of people. We need a change of heart.

Mini Rodini is born and raised with the vision to make clothes that children love to wear, without compromising social and environmental aspects of the production. This is the core of the Mini Rodini brand, and it affects every move we make.


OUR IMPACT

Producing clothes will always have an impact. Our challenge is to make it minimal. The to-do list is never ending, but we are committed to this long-term relationship called sustainability.

Mini Rodini carries one of the most sustainable ranges on the market – our collections include over 99 % products made from sustainable materials yearly. By sustainable materials, we mean non-conventional materials that have a lower impact on both nature and human health, such as organic cotton, recycled polyester, and Modal®. We also have a selection of upcycled products where we reuse leftover fabric from earlier collections.

Mini Rodini Sustainability

FABRICS MADE FOR THE LONG RUN

Mini Rodini carries one of the most sustainable ranges on the market – our collections include over 99 % products made from sustainable materials yearly. By sustainable materials, we mean non-conventional materials that have a lower impact on both nature and human health, such as organic cotton, recycled polyester, and Modal®. We also have a selection of upcycled products where we reuse leftover fabric from earlier collections.

Our products are only called sustainable when minimum 80 % of the composition includes non-conventional materials, compared to most others having a level of 50 % as a rule. For ethical and environmental reasons, we do not use skins, suede, fur, feathers, wool with mulesing or conventional silk in any of our products or collaborations.

Learn more about our materials here.

CHALLENGING CHEMICALS

Chemicals are needed in all kinds of textile products including ours – from the manufacturing of raw material to dyeing, printing, final look, and function. The challenge is to avoid the toxic ones that are harmful to the environment, animals and our health. Since our products are mainly used by children, 

To be proactive and stay up-to-date with the latest news concerning chemicals, Mini Rodini is a member of the Chemical Group at Swerea – a network for training and dialogue with experts and other brands in the industry on how to monitor best possible risk assessment and compliance.

Our chemical restriction list is based on EU’s regulation REACH, but also includes additional prohibited and limit value substances beyond this law. We believe this is needed for calling a product and production safe and sustainable.

Find our chemical restriction list here.

RESPONSIBLE WASTE

The textile industry depends heavily on human resources – for every collection, there will be waste including fabric, labor, energy, chemicals and water. What we can do is to minimize our waste and take better care of it.

We use environmental standards that ask the suppliers to have policies such as water treatment plants and sustainable chemical management and do our best to optimize every batch of production. Instead of sourcing new fabric qualities for each season, the majority of our fabric qualities are repeated. We don't match prints with pattern pieces, bindings or cuffs, and we avoid using too many contrast materials and colors for smaller pieces of garments.

In 2013 we launched our first upcycled collection made from leftover fabric. Every year, we collect waste material from previous productions to create new products with a new purpose. With this, we want to create a circular stream and eventually, close the loop.

SOCIAL RIGHTS

Our social responsibility includes every interaction with Mini Rodini – from design and manufacturing to communication and sales. We want to give children the freedom to choose clothes that match their personality, mood, and creativity. All our clothes are unisex, and we never categorize or front our products based on normative gender.

Like other companies in the clothing industry, Mini Rodini does not own any factories. Instead, we share the responsibility together with other brands. We source factories with sustainability and fair labor as key criteria and priority and therefore choose facilities already certified with the well known third party standards such as Fairtrade and SA-8000.

We aim to build relationships that are profitable for both the supplier and us. Part of this is to establish our Code of Conduct, share our mutual responsibility for fair labor and a safe working environment, and to implement living wages. Even though living wages has been a topic of discussion for decades, the vast majority of garment workers still earn far below that level. In 2014, at three factories in India, we joined a project together with other brands to pay our share of a living wage to the employees. Since then living wages has been an ongoing project – 2017 we implemented a similar living wage system on our own initiative. Our long-term goal is to implement a living wage system at all our sewing units until 2020.

We arrange third party audits that are relevant to all our suppliers equally. Our audits are always announced, openly discussed and followed up together with the supplier and third party auditor to create a mutual improvement plan. Since January 2016, we are a proud member of the independent organization Fair Wear Foundation. As members of Fair Wear Foundation, we share and implement mutual ethical requirements of the Code of Labour Practice in the supply chain. Annual reporting of these efforts is made transparently by us as well as Fair Wear Foundation. Read more here.

THE DEVIL IS IN THE DETAILS

The choice of material does not only apply to the main fabrics, but also the trims, labeling, and packing of a product. Today, the majority of all these details are organic, recycled or biodegradable. Additionally, we reuse cartons from our suppliers for outgoing shipments to customers, our stores, and retailers.

When a package is good to go, we optimize our packing methods to fill every load and ship goods from different suppliers together whenever possible. Our policy is to use sea and truck transport for bulk production depending on its origin. We only use sea/air or air transport on rare occasions to secure quality or to keep critical deliveries. For local courier freights between our warehouse, stores, and head office, we use bicycle transportation in all cases possible.

THE ART OF KEEPING A PROMISE

To assure that our materials and processes are as promised, we work with various certifications and standards covering materials, production and the employees in the factories we are working with.

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Kids Atelier is so very proud to be making strides in becoming more environmentally responsible and sustainable. We believe that being fashionable and being eco friendly can go hand-in-hand and we like to make this possible through identifying the designers that are doing it right. Good job, Mini Rodini! While Mini Rodini is hard at work making sure to keep this planet a little greener they maintain they capture the imagination of children through playful illustrative prints with bold colors and cute, stylized themes. 

 

Mini Rodini


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