Product

In an industry that contributes significantly to climate change, we understand the urgency of our choices. Our commitment to our people, planet, and products drives us to confront the grim reality: the fashion industry is a major pollution source. Acknowledging our part in this, we've taken a hard look at our material choices and begun the transition to more sustainable materials. Our materials strategy focuses on sourcing all materials — natural, synthetic, and animal based — with environmental and social considerations. Whether it is looking at environmental certifications, the compliance to our Ethical Code of Conduct or the chemical usage in our supply chain, we continuously strive towards improving our production practices and to increase our use of sustainable materials. We define our more sustainable materials as fibres and raw materials that deliver consistently reduced impacts for climate, nature, and people against conventional equivalents. We further breakdown and categorise our materials into regular, responsible and innovation, for more information on this topic and to see what we classify under each heading see our Hunkemöller Material Manual.

How We Use Our More Sustainable Materials

Josefina

In 2021 we set out to design our most sustainable bra yet. In 2022, we introduced the Josefina collection, our first collection made with at least 50% recycled content. Taking into consideration that a bra can consist of up fifty pieces, this is quite an achievement. In 2023 we released our evolved Josefina collection, now with a bio-preferred cup made from at least 30% organic materials and a lamination of 100% recycled polyester.

GREEN PRODUCT AWARD WINNER 2023 - WIES

Our award winning Wies capsule collection is the natural next step on the way to a more environmentally friendly way of manufacturing for underwear. With this collection, we challenged ourselves to re-engineer our bra by using different components made with recycled materials along with using natural dyes. Resulting in our much-loved padded bra made with 52% recycled content.

Our More Sustainable Materials

ECOVERO viscose

Viscose is a cellulosic fibre made from dissolved wood pulp. Derived from certified and controlled wood sources and produced with significantly lower fossil energy use and water than generic viscose, LENZING™ ECOVERO™ branded viscose fibres are certified with the internationally recognised EU Ecolabel for textile products (license no. AT/016/001). This label of environmental excellence is only awarded to products and services, which have a significantly lower environmental impact throughout their lifecycle: from raw material extraction, to production, distribution and disposal. From 2024 all of our viscose is from more sustainable materials meaning we mostly use LENZING™ ECOVERO™ viscose. LENZING™ and ECOVERO™ are trademarks of Lenzing AG

Bamboo viscose

Viscose is a cellulosic fibre made from dissolved wood pulp. We always try to source more sustainable viscose, for this reason we also use bamboo. It is the world’s fastest growing woody plant and does usually not require fertilisers or irrigation to grow. We ensure that the raw materials used for creating the bamboo viscose fibre come from responsibly managed forests to make sure our Bamboo viscose is a more sustainable choice than using conventional viscose.

Recycled Materials

We use recycled materials such as polyester, nylon, elastane, and plastic across many of our products. We certify all our recycled materials. This gives us the assurance as to what percentage of our products and materials are recycled. By using recycled materials, we conserve the earth's natural resources by using waste.

Better Cotton Membership

Hunkemoller is a proud member of Better Cotton. Better Cotton’s mission is to help cotton communities survive and thrive, while protecting and restoring the environment. Better Cotton is sourced via a system of mass balance and is not physically traceable to end products. We are committed to sourcing 100% of our cotton as Better Cotton, recycled cotton, or organic cotton.

Packaging materials

Our Together Tomorrow hangtags are made of recycled paper and we aim to expand the use of recycled paper to our other hangtags, carton boxes, headers, perfume boxes, and paper hooks in the future. We prioritise the use of certified recycled plastic when possible in our packaging. Currently, our hangers in-store are made of recycled plastic and we also collect our hangers back from our stores in 3 countries for recycling. All our single-pack polybags used for our products are made of recycled plastic, we are working towards increasing this by expanding the usage of our recycled bags in our pre-pack polybags and e-commerce packaging.

Chemical Management

The colour dyes and other chemicals that we use to make our clothing can have a harmful effect on people and the environment if not properly used and controlled. We work with a ‘Restricted Substances List’ (RSL), which our suppliers must follow. To ensure compliance with our RSL, independent laboratories regularly test our products