It’s not much, but it’s a start.
We’re so lucky to live in the lucky country – Australia.
So we’re doing our bit to reduce our impact on the environment.
For me, growing up on the land sustainability & recycling comes as second nature. Rubbish is not so easy on a farm with no convenient garbage truck coming weekly to pick up.
With several busy households, shearers quarters and staff members swelling well into the double digits at peak times of the year it’s a well organised, simple system. All bottles & plastics are weekly sorted by colour & type. We get 10 cents a bottle and 5 cents a can in S.A so it can be a lucrative side hustle for a small person!
Food scraps are separated into compost for the garden, or dinner for the chooks. Paper is kept next to fireplaces to avoid having to put on the AC or use clothes dryers. Everything else is buried, with trees planted over the top once full. And or given away to the local ‘Second Time Round’ with all proceeds to go to the local hospital.
We’ve always packed groceries into boxes recycled from the supermarket. We then take the box back to the supermarket. With shops an hour round trip away we bottle, soup, freeze whenever things are in season and at their best.
Hand me down clothes are second nature and it has always been instilled to buy once, buy well in regards to everything on the farm and in the house.
So in turn the small life lessons learnt in childhood I’ve tried to carry through as much as possible into the business.
We re use all the boxes, (apologies to wholesalers how rough they can look arriving into stores. After sitting in customs docks for weeks they don’t always look so pretty!)
We try to use reusable online wrapping by using pretty real ribbons that can be worn in the hair or hopefully kept and appreciated by our clients for more present giving.
Gardening is as good for the soul as it is for the planet so every season our gift with purchase is a packet of seeds, to encourage people to get back to nature.
We donate all our inspiration pieces, samples and excess stock to ‘Dulcies Vintage Van’ a wonderful old vintage bus that travels S.A with all proceeds going to the Hutt Street Centre for disadvantaged.
As a group in the office we are aiming to always reuse coffee cups, printing as little as possible, recycling where we can.
Most importantly we do not cut excess.
We try to use up end of run base fabrics from much larger brands than us. We get sent swatches of excess and select if any suit our collection and then print with our artwork. We only make what is sold and very rarely carry much stock. It is a major point for us to make everything special.
We want you to keep it forever and haul it back out year after year. Like a favourite woollen jumper for winter, a special silk floral dress for a wedding, a perfectly worn leather jacket, the cotton sundresses brought back out for each summer.
We are so proud to see many Binny customers in their dresses years past the season. We’ve also seen them in pre loved stores going to happy new homes and in response to that have created our Facebook Buy Swop Sell page as another way of making sure our message that these are investment pieces can really ring true.
It's not much but it’s a start.
