It’s estimated that 180 billion items of clothing are made every year.
Almost all of them are individually packed and shipped in single-use, plastic poly bags that are rarely recycled. Non-recycled poly bags are incinerated, accumulate in landfills, dumps, or end up in our natural environment.
Pounds of plastic poly bags we’ve replaced with Vela
Paper is one of the most recycled packaging materials, reaching record highs in North America and Europe in 2019. In support of these trends, Vela products are made from FSC® certified paper and are widely recyclable.
“We transitioned to Vela’s FSC® certified tissue bags because the infrastructure to properly recycle paper is much more developed than the infrastructure to recycle soft plastic. Our hope is that customers and stores will properly recycle these bags at their end-of-life in order to keep the material out of landfills.”
Dana Davis
VP Sustainability, Product, Strategy
“Partnering with Vela on the first ever FSC® certified Tissue bag for garments is another innovative win for both Outerknown and the ocean. Outerknown is deeply committed to eliminating the use of virgin plastic and ensuring we keep it out of our oceans.”
Kelly Slater
Founder + 11x World Surf league champion
“As a brand that thinks daily about our environmental impact, the use of plastic poly bags has always been a pain point for us… We are so thrilled that Vela invented a product that helps solve the plastic pollution problem of poly bags in the apparel industry.”
Kerry Docherty
Co-Founder, Chief Impact Officer
“We have been reducing plastic in our operations since 2015, in 2019 our outbound packaging reached 99.81% plastic free. Where most packaging elements have a clear sustainable alternative, the poly bag has been a consistent sticking point for us and the 800 brands we deal with. Having over the years reviewed and tested many alternatives, Vela is the only solution we have been happy to use and endorse based on environmental, operational and economic factors.”
Adam Hall
Head of Sustainability
“Everyone’s been telling us there’s no sustainable and practical alternative to the industry standard polybag, but Vela has shown us already that we all can do better at getting rid of unnecessary plastic from our packaging right now.”
Matt Hill
CEO
