B CORP

DEAR DENIER IS B-CORP-CERTIFIED – WITH ONE OF THE HIGHEST SCORES IN THE NORTH

The clothing industry is one of the most maligned industries regarding sustainability. High energy consumption, large CO2 emissions, deforestation, pesticide-use, release of chemicals into rivers, streams, and groundwater reserves, as well as the use of heavy chemistry that harms garment workers, animals, and nature. This is just to mention some of the negative impacts of the production of fashion goods.

When we founded Dear Denier, almost 10 years ago, we had a goal of disrupting the traditional hosiery production, by making it more ethical and environmentally friendly. It seemed almost utopian not just to reduce the environmental impact, but to create positive impact too. We are not there yet, but we are well on our way. With our B Corp™-certification we have reached an important milestone. Our continuous work with sustainability and responsibility has been recognized and approved with one of the highest scores of all certified companies in the Nordics.

When you certify as B Corp you score points on multiple parameters in different categories. We scored high in several categories. Among others we reached a score of 58.8 points in the “Environment” category – that is the 3rd highest score in the world amongst companies of 1-9 employees. This makes us proud beyond words!

LONG LIVE HOSIERY

Early on, we started working with recycled materials, improved durability through design and production techniques, responsible production, renewable energy sources, waste management and energy efficient distribution. All these practices have contributed to our high score in the B Corp Assessment. But there are still many things to improve.

We are currently working with scientists on developing a new technology for recycling of worn-out nylon tights. It is an extremely complicated process, but we are on our way to creating real change. Few have insight into how big a difference it would make to be able to recycle nylon tights, but for each pair that ends up in the trash, it costs approximately 0.8 kg CO2e when incineration – and then there is the whole production, which is an extremely water and energy intensive process, with high greenhouse gas emissions as a result. On top of that, a pair of tights rarely survive more than a few parties.

That is why our mission is to create durable tights in a great quality that have as little negative impact on the planet as possible. And when they old tights are worn-out, we want to be able to recycle them into new tights.

The B Corp™ certification is not only an extremely comprehensive certification, it is also a promise to not only be the best in the world, but the best for the world. This means that we promise to use our business to solve some the challenges we are facing regarding climate change and social injustice. The B Corp certification is a 360-degree certification, that covers the entire business. It is not only a product, material or process certification. This means getting certified is a comprehensive process. We started our work related to the certification close to one year ago, and it has been an extremely rewarding and challenging process to finally get certified. Not only have we mapped and documented all our business activities down to the smallest of details, we have also discovered where we can improve even further and gained concrete inputs as to how we can raise the bar even higher.