There’s a myth in the fashion industry that goes like this; “It’s way too expensive to pay workers well and treat the planet well and run a successful business”.

But the truth is, when producing at scale it costs little extra per garment to pay Living Wages (see section below on Living Wages) and use sustainable manufacturing methods. In addition to large scale, we also use lower direct to consumer margins, enabling us to charge you an affordable price for sustainable & ethical clothing.

We're going to let you in on an industry secret...

Brands can buy a normal wholesale T-shirt for £1.27 (or less) and sell them for £10. That’s a whopping 700% mark-up. Our T-shirts cost less than £4 and we only charge £7.99. Using large scale production and direct to consumer margins means we can charge you an affordable price for a sustainable & ethical T-shirt.

Yes! The factories we work with have a range of industry leading certifications and audits. And Yes Friends has received the highest "Great" rating from independent ethical brand directory Good On You. Below is a list of some of the certification standards we work with for our T-shirts and hoodies, see below for our certifications for our denim collection.

Yes! Most of our clothes are sent out in mailing bags made from waste sugar cane. They're made in the UK, carbon neutral and 100% recyclable. The natural photosynthesis of the sugar cane helps to make these bags carbon neutral. You can learn more about the process of how they're made here. You can recycle these bags with plastic carrier bags (just make sure to take the shipping label off).

Our bigger packages are sent in mailing bags made from recycled and recyclable plastic with biodegradable Yes Friends stickers on them. Just drop them off with plastic carrier bag recycling. 

We've also teamed up with Shopify to carbon offset all our deliveries worldwide.

Our main focus is to continue increasing wages for garment workers throughout the supply chain. We’re proud of the pioneering work we’re already doing, but we’ve still got further to go.

We have three goals:

1. We want to gain enough buying power to ensure Living Wages for all workers throughout out supply chain.

2. We want to be a voice for change among other brands and politically advocating for Living Wages across global supply chains.

3. As we expand our collection, we want to partner with more factories to provide Living Wages for garment workers.

The organic cotton is grown, ginned and spun in Indore, India. It is then knitted, dyed, cut & sewn in Tirupur, India.

Our supplier for the organic Fairtrade cotton is Pratibha Syntex. Our manufacturing supplier is Continental Clothing. You can read more about the factory here (there's also a fun little video of the factory at the bottom of the page!).

Yes! We have a range of industry leading certifications. As well as receiving the highest "Great" rating from independent ethical brand directory Good On You.

The organic cotton is certified by Fairtrade and Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS). The factory where the cotton is knitted, dyed, cut & sewn is certified by GOTS, WRAP, Oeko-tex etc. It is also audited by Fair Wear Foundation.

Yes! Our T-shirts and hoodies are made in a wind and solar powered factory. This along with organic cotton farming, efficiency in manufacturing and transportation has led to a 90% reduction in CO2 for our base T-shirt (minus printing) compared to an identical T-shirt made using conventional energy sources. It has been calculated that our T-shirts save around 6 kilograms of CO2 without using carbon offsetting.

The carbon footprint has been certified by the Carbon Trust Certifications and calculated in accordance with the BSI PAS2050 methodology.

Yes! We have a range of industry external audits. As well as receiving the highest "Great" rating from independent ethical brand directory Good On You.

Our tier 1 supplier are audited by Fair Wear Foundation and BSCI. They are the only manufacturer in the world rated 100/100 by Fair Wear Foundation. Our tier 2 laundry factory are audited by SEDEX and have a Gold LEED building rating. All our denim fabrics have a low impact EIM (Environmental Impact Measurement) score.

Evolution3

Our cut & sew factory, Evolution3, is one of the only denim factories in the world to pay living wages. They base their calculation on the Anker Methodology. We have also partnered with tip me, to be the first UK brand to allow you to tip the garment workers who made your jeans directly.

Here's what Fair Wear Foundation said about Evolution3. 

"Wages in the factory meet the Anker living wage estimate which is part of the employee benefits programme. Wages paid are approximately 42% above the BSCI Living Wage Survey, 32% above the Government Trade Union calculation and 81% above the legal minimum wage."

"On top of the basic salary, structural in‐kind benefits are provided such as allowances for food, housing, transportation, child education, unforeseen expenses, plus some savings. All employees receive private health insurance as a standard, which is expanded to include one additional family member."

Rest of the supply chain

We have focussed on finding a tier 1 supplier who pays living wages. At the moment, our tier 2 & 3 suppliers do not pay living wages. Our goal is to pay living wages throughout the entire supply chain. We’re proud to have already raised the bar and be paying good wages compared to the rest of the industry but we know there's further to go.

Organic Cotton

All the organic cotton used to make our denim is OCS or GOTS certified.

Organic cotton is farmed without the use of hazardous synthetic pesticides and fertilisers. There are many benefits of organic cotton, we've listed a few below:

• Organic cotton emits 46% less greenhouse gasses than non-organic.
• Organic cotton is primarily rain-fed, reducing the need for water irrigation. 
• Organic cotton is better for farmers and their families because they are not exposed to toxic pesticides.
• Organic cotton is better for your skin as it eliminates exposure to irritating chemicals.

Biodegradable & Recycled Polyester

Our biodegradable & recycled polyester is made by CiCLO®. Here are some of the reasons we're a fan of CiCLO®.

• By using recycled polyester we eliminate the need for new polyester to be created.
• Reduces microplastic pollution.
  Products made with polyester often shed microplastics, these then end up in our oceans and can harm sea life. By using CiCLO fibers, our polyester biodegrades in natural seawater at a greatly accelerated rate compared to similar untreated fibers, meaning less microplastic pollution.
• Reduces textile waste in landfill.
  We don't want archaeologists to be digging up our jeans in the future! CiCLO fabrics biodegrade in anaerobic landfill conditions at greatly accelerated rates compared to comparable untreated fabrics, meaning less landfill waste.

• Hemp is a fast growing plant, that naturally grows without the use of pesticides
• It requires little water to grow compared to cotton to grow

TCE

At TCE, where our men’s denim is milled, all wastewater is treated. They are also re-using wastewater in production, they have a wastewater recycling system in place and use water used to cool the production machines in other production processes. They’re aiming for 20% reused water in 2022. You can find out more info here.

Bafang

At Bafang, where our women’s denim is milled and dyed, all wastewater is treated. 52% is reused in production, the rest is discharged to a sewage plant, never rivers. 

Sinnika

At Sinnika, where our denim jacket fabric is milled. They filter all the wastewater and remove the color / toxic . All the treated water sends to common Effluent treatment plant to make further clean up the water before sending to discharge into river.

Saigon3

The chemicals used for washing the denim is a liquid, it uses an autodosing system to pump into the washing machine. The chemical will dissolve in the water and washes along with the water. After the wash has finished, the chemicals and water will go through waste water treatment.

Our branded labels are made from recycled polyester. Our thread is currently made from conventional polyester.

Sinnika

Sinnika use the rope Dyeing Indigo method to dye the yarn. They use Indigo and Sulphur dyes.

TCE

TCE also use the rope dyeing method. They also use Archroma Aniline free 30 liquid indigo dyeing stuff.

Bafang

Bafang have three rope dying machines and one slasher dye machine. They use liquid indigo from Bluconnection, Singapore and liquid sulphur black from Taifeng, China.

Where we want to improve?

For future collections of Yes Friends denim, we will look to find more sustainable dyeing processes as we grow the collection.

"Living Wages" are defined as a wage high enough to cover a family’s basic needs plus some discretionary income and can be earned in a standard work week (no more than 48 hours). "Minimum Wages" are what governments legally require companies to pay employees. There is often a huge discrepancy between these two figures, meaning garment workers across the globe live in poverty.

For example in Tirupur, India (the region where our T-shirts are made) the minimum wage is around 7,000 rupees and a "Living Wage" is around 17,775 rupees.

ActionAid did a study in 2010 which found that if a major UK supermarket had paid 2p more per t-shirt they could have paid their workers a Living Wage. 

A more recent study by Queensland University found that it would cost only 20 cents (11p) extra per t-shirt to pay a Living Wage to garment workers in India. 

Our supplier, along with a local NGO found that in the region of South India where our t-shirts are produced, it would cost 10p extra per t-shirt to pay garment workers in our cut & sew factory a Living Wage. 

All this to say, paying Living Wages costs pennies.

Many of us would fairly assume that if a brand says they are "fair" and "ethical" they pay Living Wages. This is unfortunately not always the case.

As we have seen from the studies above, Living Wages aren't expensive to pay. Often ethical fashion brands will produce in countries like Portugal, which will be more expensive to produce in and hence the price of clothing will be higher. They may also produce in small batches, again increasing the price of the final garment. 

But producing in more expensive countries like Portugal does not guarantee Living Wages (more on this in the next tab). Brands may talk about strict supplier Code of Conducts but these also don't guarantee Living Wages. Unless a brand can prove through a particular certification or through other means that they are paying Living Wages we can't trust they are doing this.

There are ethical brands that can prove they pay Living Wages. There are other ethical fashion brands who will be doing brilliant work in other areas, such as sustainability or factory safety (the fashion industry has lots of issues). We think this work should be celebrated and supported. But the idea that all ethical fashion brands pay Living Wages and are expensive because they pay Living Wages is a myth. The same goes for luxury fashion brands. In fact, the final price of the garment may have very little to do with the way it was made and how much the makers were paid.

A study of 219 brands showed that only 12% could show any progress towards paying wages above the legal minimum. Below are some of the reasons brands give for not paying Living Wages:

One of the reasons brands cite is that they don't own factories or have enough buying power at a factory therefore they do not have the power to increase wages. This maybe the case for smaller brands but for larger brands who have enormous leverage through their buying power this is not an excuse.

Another reason brands give is that change needs to come through collective bargaining agreements, enabling workers to negotiate wages for themselves. This is undoubtedly an important step in creating a fairer fashion industry and ensuring Living Wages are commonplace across supply chains. But in a context where brands are continually trying to push down prices and factory owners are reliant on complying to keep their business, garment workers are left in a weak position to negotiate wages.

Some brands are making steps forwards by working on methods of negotiating contracts with suppliers by taking into account labour cost. This form of open book accounting makes it easier to protect workers wages and is a step in the right direction.

We believe these initiatives and explanations are not good enough or fast enough for garment workers living in poverty now. Therefore we have chosen to partner with a pioneering scheme to increase workers wages now.