Ethical Fashion

Rapanui is an Eco-Fashion company from the Isle of Wight, that makes Organic, Ethical clothing using Renewable Energy with award-winning traceability. Rapanui is about making eco-fashion cool.

Rapanui Eco Latest

Ethical Fashion

Fairtrade

Environental Policy Statement

The Trouble with cotton

Animal Friendly Clothing

At the recent RSPCA Good Business Awards, Rapanui was highly commended by the judging panel for “outstanding contribution to sustainable business and animal welfare” and for its animal-friendly supply chain.

Rapanui is a company that is focused on developing sustainability in fashion. As part of this, the ecological and ethical impacts for animal species are considered too.

Animal welfare in fashion is usually associated with campaigns to ban fur, or with animal testing. At Rapanui we will never use fur and none of the products on our site were made after being tested on animals, nor were they derived from animal products.

We believe that this should not be a USP – as it does not guarantee any benefit to the animal, just that no animals were harmed in the making of the product. So our philosophy is a little more advanced than most: we judge our the success of our animal welfare policy on how much we’ve improve the quality of life of animals, not by how much we damage it.

One key benefit to animals starts at the selection of the fabric and the crop that it is made from. Some crops come require high inputs of agrochemicals – fertilisers and pesticides. Whilst these are bad for the insects that they target, they are also bad news for organisms downstream and in the rest of the food chain. Interestingly, the energy needed to make nitrogen fertilisers means they have a large carbon footprint too.

The benefits of Organic fabrics often focus on its kind-to-skin properties. Organic farming also uses methods that reduce monoculture environments and encourage biodiversity whilst attempting to eliminate the need for conventional agrochemicals. Organic fertilisers, like dung, and natural pesticides, (like co-planting species of plants that repel insects alongside cotton plants) means that animals in the immediate environment, the food chain and those that live in and around local watercourses have a prosperous life. Organic farming encourages biodiversity.

In our supply chain, even the waste streams can be put to use: the seed and mulch bye product of the ginning process is used as cattle feed.

As well as favouring fabrics made from organic and natural fibres, we actively work with consumers to raise awareness of animal welfare and sustainability. Rapanui’s core ethos is to use the power of fashion to inform and inspire people to think about sustainability. Products such as our Bamboo Panda t-shirt and Womens Panda Bamboo top are a visual, buyable action people can wear to raise awareness of animal conservation. Our brand uses products like this make it ‘cool’ to promote conservation.

The MCS organic t-shirt is another such example – we’ve worked with the MCS, first making their t-shirts and later organising beach cleans to protect wildlife in and around the marine environment. In 2009 we organised what the Marine Conservation Society called “the biggest ever haul of beach waste recorded for a non-disaster event.”

To summarise, when you shop at Rapanui you can buy products that are...
•    Not tested on animals
•    No dyes or inks tested on animals.
•    No dyes, inks or fabrics derived from animal products
•    Organic crops that encourage biodiversity and improve the quality of the ecosystems in the natural environment.

For this work we have been recognised by the RSPCA, being highly commended by their judging panel at the recent RSPCA Good Business Awards.