“I believe it starts with education,” says Hewitt, admitting that when she started out a little over two-and-half years ago, she knew next to nothing about carbon footprints or plastic pollution.
“We live in a world where we don’t question where things come from anymore,” she says, let alone their impacts on the natural world. “But I’m such a nerd, I want know this stuff!” She also wants to find solutions.
She manufactures ethically in New Zealand and says that her seamstresses are “ingrained in the seams of our clothes”. She’s obsessive about sourcing more sustainable fabrics, and says she’ll never rest because new options are always coming up. But perhaps her biggest eco win was switching, last year, to a cassava-based bioplastic packaging alternative —and inspiring many other companies to follow suit.
“When I first started my band,” says Hewitt, “I went to such lengths to make the best product that I could, then we just slapped it all in plastic at the end because we were bound by what our retailers said we needed to do in terms of how we shipped it. That just seemed absurd to me! We needed a solution.
“We found a supplier, [but] they weren’t geared up to make the right kind of fashion packaging we needed,” she explains. “It took a long time to work through but once we got it, it was pretty incredible…[The new plant-based packaging] completely dissolves leaving no micro-particles and no chemicals.”
Next job? Share it. “I had an opportunity to share this with everyone else [in fashion] who was struggling with [contributing to the problem of plastic pollution]. The amazing thing about sharing it on Instagram was the response we got from other bands DM-ing us,” she says.
“As humans, most of us want to do good, but I think sometimes we just don’t know here to start.” How about we start by giving Maggie a round of applause. The future’s bright after all.
Read how Duchess of Sussex Meghan became a sustainable fashion champion.
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