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

Ethical Fashion

At Rapanui you can guarantee you are buying sweatshop-free clothes that were not made using child labour. You can also shop knowing that the clothes were made without harmful chemicals, or in a way that harms the people in the fields or factories where they were made.

ethical fashion

Ethical fashion is about social responsibility. At Rapanui we acknowledge our responsibility to the people involved in creating the products we design and how better designs can mean a better quality of life for hundreds of people. We believe that both by acting responsibly (choosing factories with a good reputation) and third party certification (sourcing fabrics or products that carry recognised marks, such as Fairtrade) we can ensure our customers are buying products that are made in an ethical, socially responsible way.

Most of our products are soft casual wear styles and the most popular and suitable fabric for this type of clothing is cotton. When sourcing cotton we follow the recommendations of the Environmental Justice Foundation ‘Clean Cotton Campaign’ and use only Organic Cotton because, as stated in their report - the alternative in fashion is forced child labour, dangerous exposure to chemical pesticides and poverty –not something we would like to be responsible for.

Low Impact Farming

We have specifically chosen to work in regions where organic cotton is planted and harvested by hand, without mechanization, and because organic farming does not use petroleum based chemical fertilizer, pesticide or herbicide, it is less reliant on fossil fuels and has a lower carbon footprint. Under the organic standard, farmers and agricultural workers are protected by stringent social criteria to ensure their working conditions are ethical, and also by the ban on the use of poisonous pesticides and defoliants which can severely damage the health of farmers and families.

We do not use cotton from Uzbekistan while the use of forced child labour is endemic. This follows the recommendations of the Environmental Justice Foundation ‘Clean Cotton Campaign’. The complete traceability of certified organic cotton allows us to make this guarantee.

Organic Certification and Fair-trading practises ensure workers in the field get a fair deal.

What about the workers in the factory?

Fair Wear Foundation.
Labour standards for the
clothing & textile industry

Millions of garment and textile workers face poor working conditions and limits on their rights and freedoms every day. We have worked to tackle the social injustice often seen in manufacturing, commonly known as sweatshop labour. Our traceability initiative is an attempt to open up our supply chain in order to make obvious things that need improving. We made one main conclusion regarding labour in the factory: The most effective way to guarantee a high standard of socially responsible employment is to source products or textiles from factories or companies that subscribe to Fair Wear Foundation’s code of labour practices and work with the organisation in their auditing process.

Companies who join Fair Wear Foundation's Code of Labour Practices work towards proper wages for factory workers, safe and healthy working conditions and reasonable working hours; this includes reasonable paid holiday, health and safety measures in the workplace and conformation to the ethical manufacturing criteria set out by the organisation.

As a result, we choose factories and suppliers that are a member of Fair Wear Foundation wherever possible. This means that around 90% of Rapanui product lines come from FWF audited factories and carry the FWF mark.

Ethical Fashion at Rapanui

So our ideal solution is Organic in the field, Fair Wear in the factory. We source products from a number of factories, like all clothing retailers - but at Rapanui our values are different. We believe in ethical fashion; whether the item is certified Fairtrade, GOTS certified or made in a factory monitored by a member of Fair Wear Foundation, all our clothing is made with ethical values in mind.

At Rapanui, the hidden human cost of fashion has been replaced with social responsibility that our company and customers can be proud of.