Giving back to the community—whether global or local— is built into the DNA of The Little Red Planet. Through the kismet of an organic connection with Natalie Green, Director of Strategic Partnership with the Africa New Life Foundation, we stumbled upon a fairly simple way to work together with some of our beloved designers to close the sustainability gap, in our own small way.
As you may or may not know, fashion is one of the most energy-intensive industries on the planet. When you stop to consider the amount of water required to grow fiber crops, the chemical composition of synthetic fabrics, the packaging, and the shipping—not to mention the madness of the fast fashion cycle—the argument for a measured approach to buying and producing clothing becomes crystal clear. Find out more here.
During the production process, it is not uncommon for large amounts of fabric remnants to be left over from the cutting of the patterns. Often, these remnants are shipped back to the designers, to be stored for some future use. The reality is that these remnants take up a lot of space and are a hugely underutilized resource just waiting to be put to good use—and here’s where The Little Red Planet comes in.
We invited our designers to ship their remnants to us with our orders so that our friend Natalie can bring them to Africa New Life Foundation in Rwanda where they will be eagerly utilized by young designers, who partially fund their studies with the garments they create in their ateliers. It makes us so proud to support the education of these young Rwandan designers while providing an easy way for our own designers to minimize textile waste. As for The Little Red Planet, giving back is its own reward and we can’t be more pleased to be the conduit between designers in the United States and Europe and young design students in Rwanda. Truly the world is a small place and every one of us can do our part, no matter how small.