At Sunbury Design we are committed to reducing our environmental impact both with the products that we sell and the daily actions of our business. We recognise our responsibility to properly address ongoing environmental and social concerns and have the relevant policies and monitoring in place to allow us to make informed decisions and meaningful changes all aimed at continually improving our sustainability and that of our supply chain.
Although all of our existing ranges meet current environmental standards new technologies are now allowing us to develop more sustainable fabrics that still fully satisfy the unique demands of hospitality interiors.
Below are some of the key initiatives that allow us to achieve our sustainability goals along with the landmark collections leading the way in environmentally friendly, fire retardant fabrics:
Green Mark was originally developed with the help of the European Social Fund, London Met University and Greater London Enterprise (Now Newable). It is an internationally recognised environmental certification for companies that want to assure their clients and employees that they are conducting business to recognised environmental standards.
Sunbury Design is actively involved with the Green Mark accreditation programme which gives us the framework to assess, monitor and improve our environmental performance.
www.greenmark.co.ukAs technology continues to evolve we are committed to developing sustainable fabrics that meet the unique demands of hospitality interiors. Our vision is that all new collections will include genuine recycled fibre content meeting the Global Recycling Standard (GRS).
It is important to have a verified supply chain for recycled textile yarns. The GRS is an international standard that ensures accurate content claims and traceability of recycled content.
By using brands such as Repreve we can guarantee GRS compliance. With the GRS you can be sure that the raw materials used are genuinely from recycled sources.
Many of our current lines can be offered in a recycled version, minimum quantities may apply.
www.repreve.comWe prioritise developments with our suppliers who meet the latest environmental standards for their weaving and treatments. All of our products are REACH compliant and where possible meet OEKOTEX Standards ensuring there are no harmful substances used in their manufacture.
REACH stands for Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals. It is a regulation of the European Union, adopted to improve the protection of human health and the environment from the risks that can be posed by chemicals used in the manufacture of products including textiles. It is the strictest law to date regulating chemical substances and one that we fully comply with.
Halogens are widely used to meet stringent contract/hospitality fire retardancy (FR) standards with some of these elements already banned under REACH due to their toxicity.
From 2021 all of our new collections will use biodegradable, halogen free FR back-coatings and treatments and we are working to switch all our existing collections over to these more environmentally friendly options.
Along with the FR, easy clean treatments have become an essential part of hospitality fabric specification. PFC’s (perflurocarbons, PFOA and PFOS) are generally used to achieve the oil repellent properties for the highest performance level. The issue is that PFC’s are not naturally found and according to the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) in the US – fluorocarbons are among the most potent and longest lasting type of greenhouse gases emitted by human activity.
Currently PFC free treatments will only offer water repellent performance and are not resistant to oil based staining. However, we believe a high quality PFC water repellant treatment combined with the durable, inherently easy to clean polyester yarns will give the required protection against most normal spills to perform well in heavy use, contract environments.
Both Evergreen and Aquaclean are PFC free.
All of the paper and board products we use in our patterning from the pattern cards, memo tags and even our mailers are from recycled paper and FSC certified sources.
FSC is an international non-profit organisation dedicated to promoting responsible forestry. Certifying forests all over the world to ensure they meet the highest environmental and social standards.
www.fsc.orgWe are making continual changes to reduce and minimise waste with the mantra of ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’.
To service our growing markets in an environmentally responsible way we have moved away from producing large, full case sample books to smaller swatches which use much less raw materials and these are re-usable and recyclable.
As part of our environmental policy we closely manage the number of pattern cards we make and we are now able to distribute our product catalogues using our e-binders which can be viewed and downloaded from our website.
view e binders
