Bransparent Who?

Bransparent is an platform to facilitate sustainable fashion consumption. We assemble offers from a variety of labels & online shops and we also provide more than 100 offline shops in Germany which you can easily locate with our Google maps application.

Our database of more than 1500 products from 30 producers is growing and getting updated on a daily base. The so-called “Green Fashion” or “Ethical Fashion” is available for you on our website. We only offer products from certified labels that can prove their dedication for a socially and environmentally responsible production.

The words “Brand” and “Transparency” that are included in our company name show you our highest goal:

We want to offer sustainable products from fashionable and high-quality brands and at the same time provide more transparency regarding their social and environmental origin.

We ask our producers to prove their certificates and their social and environmental engagement. Further we confront our producers to answer six critical key-questions which address the most important problems in the textile (business) production. To underline our high standard of transparency we show our customers the answers in the producer´s company profile. Registered users can request producers to answer the key questions and rate the answers provided.

Based on the certificates, the answers of the key questions and the corresponding proofs we award the engagement of our producers with our buttons.

Symbols mean what?

Our goal is to support interested consumers to make more responsible shopping decisions and to make the evaluation process as easy as possible. Therefore, we have created our button system: ecologically friendly producers receive our green button, socially friendly producers receive our yellow button. Every producer has to answer our six key-questions regarding the most important problems in textile production and provide relevant proofs for their engagement.

When assessing the sustainability of the producers we mostly focus on social and environmental certificates. One of the biggest problems for the interested consumer is the so called “certificate-jungle”, in which the large variety of different certificates leads to confusion instead of providing reliable guidelines for more responsible shopping.

In co-operation with Katharina Schaus, a renowned certification specialist, we made a selection of certificates that guarantee a high degree on sustainability (regarding the environment and the compliance with social standards). Producers without certification also get the chance to receive our buttons, if they provide sufficient proofs for the key issues addressed in our key questions. At the end of the evaluation process all existing information is being assessed by our certification specialist to decide which producers are awarded our green and yellow buttons.

Eventually the buttons help to get a quick understanding about the engagement of each producer and they motivate the producers to provide the necessary information to make their engagement for the environment and social aspects more transparent.

Why should I care?

The question is, why should I buy my next t-shirt on Bransparent. We all suspect that things are not as glamorous and clean as conveyed in marketing campaigns when it comes to the actual production of our sneakers and shirts. When a t-shirt is sold for 3 Euro one might assume that not everyone in the production process really had a great time. 90% of the clothing sold in Germany is being imported from developing countries and produced in questionable conditions for humans and nature.

However, we don't have to make compromises with regards to fashion and style if we decide to shop more consciously. You can dress yourself in the same way and style as before, without indirectly supporting miserable production conditions. Therefore we have assembled a large collection of socially and environmentally friendly fashion.

As consumers, we should be aware that every spent Euro, is a decision for or against a company. We believe that we should support those companies, which do not exploit the intransparency of the globalized market, but instead actively support the compliance with social standards and environmental protection.

Eventually, we offer you products that do not change your wardrobe fashion wise, but were produced in a more responsible way. This is important, because on Indian cotton fields more than 450.000 children are forced to work 9-13 hours a day in debt-slavery and unpaid, because they were sold by their parents to the contractual partners of global companies. Every According to estimations of the WHO (World Health Organization) each day about 70 workers die on the cotton fields, most of them children below the age of 14. 25% of all insecticides and 11% of all pesticides worldwide are used for cotton cultivation, while cotton fields only account for 2.4% of worldwide farmlands. Many of these pesticides are highly active neurotoxins, having been in use as chemical weapons in the past. Massive human rights violations are commonplace: textile workers are locked in the sleeping halls after 22.00h to not be able to flee from production sites. Workers are punished by beatings and violent abuse. Those are only a few examples of the global clothing mismanagement that we can prevent, if we buy from producers, which actively act to provide a more responsible alternative.

Who gets paid?

We believe that a sustainable business in the sense of environmental consciousness und social engagement should not exclude economic success. Real sustainability relies on all three pillars.

Bransparent earns its money by promoting and linking the products of the approved producers, which pay a commission fee for every sale generated by our users.

For you, our service, the bundling of the existing Green Fashion offering and the transparency information to our producers, is completely free of charge.

As a member of onepercentfortheplanet, we donate 1% of our earnings to environmental projects. The rest we use to further develop our services.

Is an organic shirt more expensive ?

Socially or Environmentally friendly cloths are often slightly more expensive than normal cloths. Many production processes of an Eco shirt are more expensive than those of a normal shirt.

Resources

For the production of eco shirts ecologically cultivated cotton is being used. This cotton is cultivated without employing pesticides or chemical fertilisers.

Manufacturing

During the manufacturing process, environmentally friendly substances are being used to enhance the yield. Energy and Water saving machinery is used throughout the production process.

Production plant

The production plants operate under consideration of strict social standards and pay fair wages to their employees.

Inspections

Throughout the entire production and distribution chain, regular audits, controls and inspection take place in order to ensure quality standards.

What exactly is Fairtrade all about ?

Fair trade is an organized social movement which promotes standards for international labour, environmentalism, and social policy in areas related to production of Fairtrade labeled and unlabeled goods.

Fair trade's strategic intent is to deliberately work with marginalised producers and workers in order to help them move from a position of vulnerability to security and economic self-sufficiency. It also aims at empowering them to become stakeholders in their own organizations and actively play a wider role in the global arena to achieve greater equity in international trade.

Does the money actually arrive at the producer?

Yes. Fair Trade does not work with intermediaries. The money is transferred directly to the producer. The exporting party pays producers directly and has to report its payments yearly to the FLO, the Fair Labelling Organization, a governing body of all Fair Trade certificates.

Who decides about profits?

The producers directly decide about the profits they raise.

Is the use of the Fair Trade revenues monitored?

FLO Inspectors regularly check how the Fair Trade money is being used. Additional audits are being conducted by professional accountants.

Source

Why organic clothing ?

Today, about 25% of the all insecticides and 10% of all pesticides are being employed in the cotton cultivation. The intensive use of toxic substances and other harmful chemicals has grave consequences for the environment and the health of farmers. Contaminated groundwater is causing tremendous environmental damage; farmers are highly prone to pesticide poisoning.

Ecological cotton is being cultivated within supervised plants according to strict rules. The cultivation of ecological cotton prohibits the use of toxic substances such as pesticides or chemical fertilisers.

Ecologically cultivated cotton improves soil regeneration and helps to preserve environmental systems.