As Abiteks, we pride ourselves on our sustainability practices and our willingness to adapt to newer innovations in sustainable fashion production. In our latest project we not only adress the full production and life cycle of the garment in terms of creating an item that is completely made up of sustainable materials, but we also give back to our clients by providing 100% transparency and telling the full story on how the garment came to be.
As Abiteks, we adhere firmly to three core values; innovation, sustainability, and honesty. We believe our key to success has always been our willingness to create using the newest innovations, to contribute to a better future and to transparently communicate the stories of our quality products, stories that we take pride in and want to share with our clients. With this project, we have shared the story of our 100% sustainable polo shirt.
This polo shirt was first conceptualized, and modeled in Clo3D, eliminating the initial prototyping procedures necessary for mass production, while also saving time and resources. It’s patterns were created, knits and fabrics were drafted and yardage calculated, all necessary steps in making sure this product starts it’s realization journey with the least amount of waste produced.
Then comes the process of bringing the imagined product to life. Our final product is aimed to be an easy-care, breatheable, non-creasing polo shirt, with a fabric composition of 55% cotton to 45% polyester. We firmly believe in the ethical treatment and profit of our suppliers, which is why prefer using fair trade CMIA (Cotton Made in Africa) cotton, which we acquire from our supplier, Hamboya yarn dyehouse. The polyester used in this garment is also from 100% recycled POLY-Eco yarns , which we acquire from Polyteks,our regenerated synthetic yarn supplier.
Once we have our cotton and polyester components, the next step would be to combine them in a knit, and then piece and tailor the parts together to create the final garment. This whole process, from forming the knitted fabric, to the addition of trims and hardware is done by our knitwear producer Rasa Tekstil who fully meet our sustainability requirements. But our goal isn’t in reach just yet. As our aim is to create 100% sustainable products, we make sure to collect the different trims we use from sustainable suppliers as well. Our buttons are recycled buttons by our button supplier, Setko Düğme. and our sewing yarns are by Coats, a world renowned producer of sustainable yarns. The narrow woven tape used in the collar, and slits is a recycled product by KorkmazTeks, a local woven tape producer. Our hang tag and neck label is created by industry leading sustainable packaging and labelling supplier A-TEX , while our care labels are created by their sub-company Trimco.
Finally, our packaging is made of 100% recycled plastic by Mainetti.
Our transparent supply chain, sustainable material selection and our usage of 3D render tools in our prototyping process, allow us to achieve a clear reduction in our carbon footprint in the production process of our sustainable polo shirt. We can see a distinct difference in production sustainability when we compare our product to a conventional shirt. We are proud to share with you the data we have collected on the greatly reduced environmental impact of our sustainable polo shirt, which are as follows;
