Our mission at FR3ND is to be as sustainable as possible and produce great quality shirts that damage the planet far less than cotton or synthetic shirts while maintaining comfort and performance.
Our superfine merino wool shirts are engineered to do the job of several cottons or synthetic shirts as they don’t crease, repel stains, wick and dry fast and never smell of bacteria like synthetic non-iron shirts and cotton shirts can do. This means you can wear one merino shirt for several days without needing to wash it.
By washing the garment less, your merino shirt will last much longer and also saves a huge amount of water. A recent study has concluded that 1 load of washing every 2 days = 280LBS of CO2 a year. Washing a polyester non-iron shirt releases over 700,00 synthetic micro plastic fibres that wash into the water system and oceans every single wash that can harm marine life and end up in the food chain.
When you do wash your FR3ND merino shirt, you can be assured that any fibres that do get washed into the water system will degrade well before they reach the marine life and are 100% natural and harmless to the environment.
When the shirt eventually comes to the end of its life and ends up in a landfill, the merino shirt fabric will start to degrade within weeks and will have degraded completely within 6-12 months. The only remaining trace will be the recycled polyester label and the thread used to stitch the shirt (we're working on that). By contrast, a synthetic shirt takes decades to degrade, in fact, nobody actually knows if its decades or centuries, as it takes so long to degrade, there hasn’t been enough time to conduct a study. When it does eventually degrade, the polyester fibres turn into tiny micro-plastics that can eventually find their way into the food chain and pollute the soil where they were buried.
Cotton isn’t much friendlier than polyester. Sure, it’s a natural fibre and doesn’t harm the planet when washed or disposed of, however the water used to produce cotton is massive. It is estimated that 10,000 litres of water is used to produce just one kilogramme of cotton fabric.
The components we use on our merino shirts are also well considered. We weave our labels from recycled polyester made from plastic bottles taken from the oceans and our buttons are 100% shell, again a natural product that won’t harm the planet when disposed.
Alongside developing product that are as sustainable as possible, we are proud to partner with One Tree Planted, a non profit dedicated to global reforestation. Our commitment to One Tree Planted is to try and offset our carbon footprint by donating 3% of our annual profit or plant 1 tree per shirt sold (whichever the greatest).
