RAPANUI WANTS YOU TO RETURN YOUR CLOTHES, HERE’S WHY

By: Hillary LeBlanc

When considering the circular economy, the question of ‘what happens to clothing after purchase?’ continues to have different solutions. While we are all familiar with recycling, transforming garments, donating and swapping, the idea of returning your garment to the seller is a newer concept gaining traction.

One brand offering this option is Rapanui, founded by brothers Martin and Rob Drake Knight. The brothers grew up on the Isle of Wight. They became nature lovers due to their scenic surroundings and built a love of surfing. The brothers hated the idea that pollution would destroy their playground and that things being tossed into the waters would come back ashore.

Rapanui was born with the philosophy of creating products responsibly and positively as the founders believe a waste-free world is possible in our lifetime. Every product Rapanui puts into production is designed from the start to be sent back to the company once it is worn out. Using their ‘Remill’ technology they can recover and reuse old clothing to make something new. Any 100% cotton clothing from any brand sent to the company, not just Rapanui, will be reused. The brothers give store credit for products returned as incentive and believe this will help further the circular economy. 

Source: Rapanui website

The brothers started making products in 2008, in a shed with only £200. Part of being mindful of waste came from wanting to keep their budget tight. They also learned early on that a good T-shirt should be organic and soft yet tough to last. They felt they needed to invent new materials, technology, supply chains, and entirely new types of factories. When they learned that 10% of worldwide CO2 comes from clothing, and that 60% of clothes are made from or with plastic and that a dump truck per second of textiles waste goes to landfill or incineration every second, the pair knew we wanted to be part of the solution, not part of the problem. Rapanui products are made from organic materials, using renewable energy and designed to be re-manufactured when they are worn out. Should anyone return garments in good quality, Rapanui donates them to hospice partners. 

Garments can be recycled if the label has 100% cotton. By entering your email on their website, a post label is generated to send the item which allows you to send the item to the headquarters and receive your money off code for your future purchases. Products that have been recycled through the ‘Remill’ program are 50% virgin organic cotton and 50% recovered cotton.

Rapanui offers a full collection of men’s clothes, women’s clothes, kids clothes and allow shoppers to customize items as well. Items also include tote bags, caps, mugs, notebooks and stickers. One user on Reddit shares that the brand is sustainable, and products purchased were extremely affordable, adding that the customization process was great. “I just tried it for the first time, and when the shirt arrived, I was blown away by the quality of the image that they printed on the shirt.”

Printing in real time allows Rapanui to only make what people need when they need it, saving money that allows the company to spend on making organics and renewables affordable. Rapanui has also invested in robotics that make the packing process 30% more efficient meaning they can afford the 10X increased cost of using packaging made from plants, not plastic. They’ve gone as far as to share this technology openly on the internet with other brands via the platform at Teemill.com.

After working many years to design a circular supply chain, they built Teemill as a platform in 2018. Teemill is a software platform for all fashion brands, and makes the manufacturing technology and circular model accessible to anyone with an internet connection who wants to sell branded garments. Teemill is now the parent company, and Rapanui is the brothers' own clothing line, which is one of the numerous brands that use Teemill to produce clothing.

Source: Reddit

Rapanui partners with charitable organizations such as the Marine Conservation Society, Surfers Against Sewage, Sea Shepherd, and BBC Earth. Shirts purchased from these collaborations support the environment and the organizations behind them.

In other sustainability efforts, the wastewater used from dyeing garments is recovered, cleaned and recirculated. At the end of the creation process, the water coming out of the filters and going back around to be reused again is crystal clear and clean enough to drink. 

As of 2019 tens of thousands of other businesses were connected to Teemill over the cloud, Teemill has doubled in size each year and the business is funding its own rapid expansion.