From textile waste to Harmony Range packaging

Cotton is mainly grown for the textile industry, used for towels to jeans. The first step of the production is a ginning process which removes seeds from the cotton plants. These seeds are the source of the cotton linters that go to make cotton paper. That’s why the cotton paper is a by-product of the textile production process.

Being sourced from a recycled by-product of the textile making process, cotton paper can, therefore, be considered of very low environmental impact as no cotton is grown specifically to make paper. If the cotton paper was not made, the linters would be thrown away.

Further, the environmental impact of turning cotton linters into paper is the same than the wood pulp process. Hence, cotton paper production is considered environmentally friendly as it produces no additional environmental impact.

What about all the pesticides used in the production of cotton?

This is a very important topic! By no means, we want to mislead you.

The conventional cotton industry relies on harsh chemicals and genetically modified cotton. This causes long term problems that we started to see already, soils are becoming exhausted, meaning they are not as fertile, nutrients get washed away, pollution of waterways and rivers… Detrimental to the health of our ecosystem. Moreover, there is a big issue about the vast water consumption of conventional cotton crops and the problems that this is bringing to the communities.

Please support organic cotton production

Organic cotton production is growing, it eliminates hazardous and synthetic pesticides, enables farmers to grow other crops for food and income, uses much less water (actually the humongous 91%), thanks to the healthy soil fertility, uses less energy and reduces almost in half the CO₂ emissions. Read more about organic cotton.

Conventional cotton agriculture is a heavily polluted form of crops, for our earth, workers and the affected communities. We encourage you to support and become an organic cotton household. You can start small, avoiding buying new clothes that use conventional cotton, then gradually switch in your houseware. It is not just for us, it will be an impactful change for many communities and also the environment.

We have selected a local European paper mill to reduce our impact on carbon footprint. The water consumption, waste and energy management are key to paper production efficiency.

Our papermakers self-generate 75% of the energy by their own power-heat cogeneration system, which generates electricity from water power and solar energy. A waste-prevention initiative reduces residual waste to less than 2%. And the water for the manufacturing process can be reused up to seven times thanks to an ozone-based water treatment system.

I believe that any type of production involves some type of environmental costs. However, many are working to reduce this impact to the very minimum. And we choose to work with them.

We think that the best approach when working with natural resources is to emulate nature, to work with nature no against it. This is one of our core values.

We all know that there are some materials or type of production that clearly damage the environment. Then there are others, less harmful. But the reality is that the disproportionate demand for any material or resource makes it unsustainable, damaging and sometimes not just the environment but also the communities.

There are thousands of examples where we humans, by an unreasonable (sometimes even extravagant) use of a specific material or resource destroy its habitat, modify its nature to increase production, reduce fundamental costs to increase profit… Sometimes it is not the material or product itself, but the insane way we choose to produce.

Harmony range packaging is tree-free, a by-product of the textile industry, from waste to paper. A way to reduce the pressure of the exaggerated demand for trees. But it is not the only one. Our next range will use another alternative because there are many! If we use all of them a little, we won’t exhaust just one.

Almost 600 conservation experts signed a letter published to coincide with UN report into the loss of biodiversity. I would like to leave you with their last sentence:

“The future of all life on Earth lies in the balance”