Sustainable Concepts
Since the start of our Style Conscious mission in 2001, we've been a pioneer in the jeans and fashion industry.
Our innovative role in exploring and developing new sustainable garment production has lead to a new, accepted conscious approach in jeans and fashion.
Many brands are now following our organic revolution.
Kuyichi is proud to be the first for organic.
And we keep on pioneering. Besides organic cotton and linen we also work with new, cutting-edge sustainable products.
What about clothing made from recycled PET bottles, spare denim, soya, lenpur and vegetable tanned leather?
Click on the links below to find out more.
Did you know that 25% of all insecticides used globally are used for growing cotton? These chemicals pollute soil and water, kill wildlife and make people sick.
Our organic cotton is grown on chemical and pesticide free soil. No chemical related health risks, no environmental damage, no polluted soil.
Only certified cotton deserves the name 'organic'.
Our organic cotton is certified, mostly under the 'sustainable textile production' program by SKAL International. This assures all processes (from growing cotton to production of the garments) are certified in a controlled program...
Many brands are now following our organic revolution.
Kuyichi is proud to be the first for organic.
Bamboo does not cause any pollution to the environment.
The natural cellulose fibre of bamboo plants grows very quickly, so it is extremely sustainable, and its properties have a natural degradation process in the soil.
Kuyichi use the fibre to make a revolutionary new fabric that has a great story and a beautiful hand feel.
Fabric leftovers from previous collections are re-used and turned into spare denim.
In many cases this fabric is simply discarded or left to remain in the production factory.
It is our goal to use as many existing materials as possible, to reduce waste disposal and respect the environment in all possible ways.
Organic cotton is grown free from pesticides; linen is made from the fibre of the flax plant and was the first vegetable fibre known to man.
The process for cultivating linen is just as clean as organic cotton, but uses less water. By using this cotton / linen fabric we use two sustainable materials while creating a great product, with a rich hand feel.
The hemp plant provides one of the strongest and most durable natural fibres available today. Growing hemp is more sustainable than cotton.
The plant grows very quickly, doesn’t need much water and provides 2.5 times more fibre than the regular cotton plant.
Hemp has been used to make garments for thousands of years.
Today Kuyichi uses a blend of hemp & cotton that will last longer than cotton fabrics but still feels comfortable.
The hemp keeps you insulated and dry, but will not wear away.
Our leather jackets and belts are vegetable tanned. During the tanning process special barks and juices of trees are given to the leather skins.
These are then treated in a sunbath to intensify the colours. After this, the use of different polishes and oils guarantee a variety in colours and hand feel.
Why? Natural dyes add natural beauty to our clothing, revive an art and skill used in the past, offer an eco-friendly alternative to synthetic dyes and do not cause allergies for the production workers.
Need we say more?
In our SS09 collection we introduce jackets made from recycled PET bottle fiber.
Approximately 25 two-litre PET bottles are used for one jacket. By wearing a Kuyichi jacket you are reducing waste!
Recycled PET bottle fibre is the eco-friendly equivalent of the traditional virgin fiber made from petroleum. Textiles made from recycled PET bottles means 100% recycling and decreases the of the amount of waste.
Dumped PET bottles will pollute the earth for thousands of years and that's definitely not what we want. The recycled fibres can be used in a very good manner for polyester fabrics and there is no trade-off regarding the quality of the fiber. Recycled yarns and the traditional virgin yarns have the same strength, warmth and durability properties.
So what does the production process look like?
1. Collecting
It all starts on the streets with people drinking their soda from PET bottles. Later on the used PET bottles are collected by a recycling company and shipped to a factory. The bottles are sorted according to their materials and then pressed into bales.
2. Cutting
Next step: the bottle bales are sent to a PET recycling processing factory. There the bales are crushed. After this all shredded paper labels and plastic caps are removed, resulting in pure PET fragments; the PET flakes.
3. Producing the fiber
Just like the virgin fiber would be, the PET flakes are emptied in a vat and heated, and then forced through spinnerets. The produced yarn is woven into fabrics.
4. Designing Kuyichi jackets
The Kuyichi designs are sent to the factory. There the fabrics made from recycled PET bottles are transformed into style conscious jackets.
5. Final step?
You are the proud owner of a Kuyichi jacket and you just reduced the waste belt with 25 PET bottles by only wearing it!
The CO2 released in this process is almost nothing, and the process conserves high amounts of energy, making this another eco friendly solution to garment making.
In our SS09 collection we added a new fabric in our range of sustainable fabrics that we work with; jeans made from the sustainable fabric lenpur - a fibre made from wood pulp.
The result? A pair of hand soft Kuyichi jeans that is produced in a fully eco-sustainable way!
Lenpur is composed of wood fibers from the branches of pine trees. After collecting the excess tree clippings, the fibers are extracted and spun into yarns.
The good thing is that the pine trees have been cultivated in a fully eco-sustainable way. No unnatural deforestation takes place and only non-vital parts of the trees are selected.
Harvesting coincides with normal pruning, rather than chopping down the whole tree.
This makes Lenpur highly eco-sustainable and therefore suitable for using it in manufacturing our jeans.
What about the features of this wood pulp fiber?
The fibers retain the woods' natural properties. Lenpur is very soft weave, has a high absorbance and releases humidity.
This makes a pair of Kuyichi jeans made from Lenpur transpiration-promoting and very thermoregulatory. The fiber can sustain a higher thermal range so your pair of jeans keep you fresh in the summer and warm in the winter.
The very soft weave of Lenpur gives the jeans a very soft feel. It's hard to imagine your pair of jeans originates from a pine tree with needles!
Sustainable fabrics allow us to retain our modern lifestyle in a more harmonious way with the earth we live on. With the use of sustainable fabrics we support this. The same goes for soya denim.
Soya fabric is made from the leftover by-products of soyabean oil or tofu production. There is a large production of soya worldwide. Soyabeans are the primary ingredient in many processed foods, including milk product substitutes.
Just go to your local supermarket or Chinatown area and you'll find it everywhere; from tofu to soya milk to veggie burgers. But it's not just edible, you can also wear it!
The yarn of soya fabrics is made from parts of the soya plant that are normally thrown away as waste products.
But this by-product contains the protein which can be spun into yarns. In this way new value is found in old waste.
On top of its big ecological advantage soy denim has a crisp, clean look and is light and comfortable to wear. Kuyichi's soya denim jeans are made from 35% soya and 65% organic cotton.
The soya yarns are woven in the breadth of our fabrics, the organic cotton yarns are woven in the length. The Kuyichi jeans made of soya denim are raw and unwashed. This results in a very durable pair of stiff jeans that gain their unique look and feel the more you wear them.
Another advantage of the soya denim is its remarkable bright dark blue colour. Altogether this makes it a beautiful and highly durable pair of jeans.
