Change starts with your underwear
PACT is a new eco-friendly underwear company started by, Jason Kibbey & Jeff Denby. The company makes three different fits in men’s or women’s, in three different styles, with each designed aligned to a certain cause. Each of the causes gets 10% of the sales from the various design, with the underwear ranging in price from $22 for a thong to $28 for boxers.
PACT underwear is made of 95% organic cotton and 5% elastane to give it the perfect amount of stretch. While some underwear is 100% organic cotton, these garments tend to lose their shape quickly and have shorter lifespans – meaning more of them end up in landfills. A garment containing 5% elastane is still considered organic. >>
The cotton that eventually turns into PACT underwear is grown at Egedeniz’s own organic cotton project, the Kadioglu Organic Cotton Project, located in the Izmir region of Turkey. You can rest assured that the cotton is certified organic and non-GMO: all processes from the fields through ginning, spinning, knitting or weaving, washing, dyeing and manufacturing are certified by the Dutch controlling and certifying organization Skal, a part of the Control Union World Group. Furthermore, Egedeniz is the first factory in Turkey to receive GOTS (Global Organic Textile Standard) certification and, unlike many factories around the world, every one of Egedeniz’s processes are GOTS certified. Additionally, all of Egedeniz’s processes are certified by the National Organic Program (NOP) of the USDA.
What about Fair Trade? Turkey is not considered a “developing” country by the Fairtrade Labeling Organization FLO-CERT, so goods from Turkey cannot be labeled as “fairtrade”. However, this does not mean that farmers in Turkey are free from exploitation. In order to ensure the best quality cotton from farmers that are paid fairly, Egedeniz has partnered with its own cotton project.
Some people have already asked why PACT doesn’t make underwear out of bamboo or soy. Don’t we know that cotton, even organic cotton, uses a lot of water? One of the most important things that Jeff and Jason have learned in developing the PACT brand is that everything has a trade-off. If you want to change the products people buy, they still have to want to buy them. We know that organic cotton is not 100% environmentally friendly, but it is much better than conventional cotton grown with pesticides – and that is the cotton we want to replace. The overwhelming majority of underwear sold around the world is made with conventional cotton. We want our customers to stop buying conventionally grown cotton underwear and replace them with a beautiful pair of organic stretch cotton underwear from PACT. Our customers can take an easy step toward a more sustainable lifestyle without giving up what they feel comfortable wearing.
And this is one reason that change starts with your underwear.
Furthermore, while growing bamboo is generally quite environmentally friendly, the downside is that the fibers are quite tough. As a result, strong chemical solvents are required to process the material into soft fabric, raising both health and environmental concerns. And, while soy is a naturally soft material, the fabric is less durable, so your underwear would deteriorate more quickly and have to be replaced more often, which has its own negative environmental impact.
Materials are just one of the areas where we are constantly working to reduce our environmental footprint. Stay tuned.
The three organizations they are giving to so far:
Forest Ethics
826 National
Oceana
