Most clothes factories waste on average about 40% of their raw materials. That's almost half! Such waste adds up to a huge global problem because fabrics with minor imperfections, excess stock, and offcuts are all dumped - literally. Every year, 100 million pounds of textiles worldwide are trashed, burned, or buried. And that's just the end result - which doesn't even factor in the water and energy resources it took to make the fabric in the first place! This cycle is something that Tonlé is trying to combat.
Tonlé is Cambodia's largest and only zero-waste ethical apparel company. The brand is known for its comfortable, wearable clothes that are as original and beautiful as the people who make them. Tonlé adheres to principles waste reduction in every aspect of production, gathering unused garment scraps to create new fashions.
Currently the brand is recycling 22,000 pounds of fabric per year, which calculates into preventing 154,000 pounds of carbon from being emitted into the atmosphere, and saving 46 million gallons of water, EACH YEAR. This is just one small company making a difference. Imagine if every factory worked like this!
