UK-based sustainable and ethical womenswear brand Baukjen, has launched a Sustainability Index, which will share environmental and social impact scores for each product in its collections to assist customers in making better-informed purchase decisions.

The B Corp certified firm wants to provide a higher level of transparency to its consumers so they can better understand the brand's supply chain, including how material selections and production affect the total effect of each Baukjen garment.

The Baukjen Sustainability Index uses Higg tools created by the Sustainable Apparel Coalition to determine each product's total score, which is based on seven distinct metrics. The index metric is computed using five environmental elements, which account for 70% of the overall score, and two social factors, which account for 30%.

Each product is graded on its influence on global warming, water usage, resource depletion, eutrophication, chemical use, traceability, and people's well-being, ranging from poor to outstanding. According to Baukjen, the higher the score, up to 100%, “the more sustainable a product is for the world and its people.”

For example, the brand's autumn/winter 2021 collection's 'Jody' recycled wool sweater has an exceptional impact of 91%, while the 'Paloma' top, made from eco-friendly Lenzing Ecovero, has an excellent impact of 83%.

The Baukjen Sustainability Index was established as an in-house tool to compare fibers and how the company makes its garments in order to assist the company to identify areas where it might improve in order to become more sustainable. Baukjen, on the other hand, hopes that by sharing the environmental and social effect of each garment with its consumers, they will not only be able to purchase more responsibly but also learn that sustainability is about much more than carbon emissions.

Baukjen said in a statement that all things are interrelated in nature, and it is vital to assess the effect in other ways that incorporate resource depletion, pollution, and ecological destruction.

The index is the newest sustainability effort from the House of Baukjen, which includes the womenswear and maternity clothing brands Baukjen and Isabella Oliver. In recent years, the fashion company has introduced an in-house rental program that allows clients to rent styles for two weeks, as well as a collection made up of 90% responsible fibers and growing. It also offers a Pre-Loved program, which encourages previous customers to donate their pre-owned clothes to the store either be repurposed, re-loved, or recycled, in a bid to make fashion circular.

House of Baukjen was also recognized by B Corp as an "Impact Business Model" earlier this year and was designated the "highest scoring" fashion B Corp in the UK, as well as the second-highest in Europe, with an "excellent" grade.

Along with the introduction of the Baukjen Sustainability Index, Baukjen and Isabella Oliver are partnering with Oxfam for Second Hand September, as part of the charity's Pre-Loved take-back program. Customers can give goods to Baukjen or Isabella Oliver to be re-loved, reused, or discarded if they no longer wear them. 50% of the net revenues from both companies' sales will be given to Oxfam to help them fight poverty across the world.

The Baukjen x Oxfam collaboration aims to lower production levels and drastically reduce the amount of maternity and non-maternity fashion waste that ends up in landfills each year. For every piece of clothing donated, the slow fashion business will plant a tree on behalf of their clients through Eden Reforestation Projects.

De Swaan Arons, founder and creative director of House of Baukjen, said that their Pre-Loved scheme aims to prolong the lifespan of their clothes with the goal of lowering the impact on the environment and improving the rate of reuse and recycling. This will not only be helping to safeguard the planet, but you will also be benefiting many communities since revenues will go to Oxfam's important initiatives. As slow fashion supporters, they believe in circularity and are happy to have established Pre-Loved and rental programs, which are helping to pave the way for a circular fashion business model.