Sustainability Practice
At Nellie Joans we're always striving to be environmentally friendly at all times - this is an ongoing process.
Listed below are the ways we are currently practicing this. Please contact us if you have any further suggestions for operating a sustainable online sewing supplies business.
SUSTAINABLE PACKAGING
Each order at Nellie Joans is thoughtfully packaged to create minimal or zero waste. Items we use that can be recycled or home composted are:
- Paper tape, string, tissue paper
- Decomposable cellophane bags
- Cardboard & paper
- Home compostable courier bags
- We may also on occasion re-use bubble wrap or ziplock bags
SUSTAINABLE SEWING
At Nellie Joans, we're constantly researching environmentally friendly products to keep as regular stock items for you to sew sustainably. An example of this is our swimwear fabric range that is made from recycled fibres. It has a number of ticks such as:
- Beautifully soft and strong
- Environmentally friendly
- 100% regenerated nylon fibre made from pre- and post-consumer waste
- Lycra that is 5x more chlorine resistant than the average
- UPF 50+ sun protection
- 8 saturated solids plus a range of custom designed prints
It is important to us to ensure we are always stocking high quality products for you - this means there is less likelihood of fabric or findings being returned, therefore incurring a smaller carbon footprint.
We allow purchases of small quantities of fabric at Nellie Joans. This contributes to less wastage when you are cutting out your projects - it always feels great to know you're able to use nearly every last scrap of fabric with little left over!
Our fabric pieces that are smaller than a saleable size are never wasted! We have two options for these - they are either bundled up and discounted for you to purchase, or set aside for use in sampling of lingerie sewing projects for Nellie Joans.
FUTURE PLANS
We want to always be looking out for the most environmentally friendly options to ensure our country and planet is kept as well as it can be for future generations.
Possible changes we are looking into for our packaging are courier bag shipping labels that can be recycled along with the bags.
A NZ company is currently developing these decomposable labels and they should be available to the market very soon. This will mean the label won’t have to be removed from the courier bag prior to composting - an important step forward for our environment.