InJEANious Designs, NC

Handmade products made from upcycled jeans

We design, produce, and market a wide variety of functional and whimsical items made from upcycled post-consumer waste denim jeans. Our current designs include multiple bags, pillows, skirts, hair accessories, phone charger pockets, baby toys, and many more products in the works!

The Circular Fashion Industry is rapidly growing, and InJEANious Designs, NC lands squarely in the reuse/upcycling stage. By taking post-consumer waste and creating products by upcycling denim jeans, InJEANious Designs, NC diverts them from the traditional linear waste stream.

Textile-based pre- and post-consumer solid waste is an enormous and, for the most part, highly avoidable environmental challenge. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has measured the generation, recycling, composting, combustion with energy recovery and landfilling of textile material in Municipal Solid Waste (MSW), and they estimate that, “The generation of textiles in 2018 was 17 million tons.” (EPA and OLEM 2017) This was 5.8% of the total MSW generation that year. They also reported that,“ The recycling rate for all textiles was 14.7% in 2018, with 2.5 million tons recycled, [and] landfills received 11.3 million tons of MSW textiles in 2018.” (EPA and OLEM 2017) This was 7.7% of all MSW sent to landfills. (EPA and OLEM 2017)

Circular Fashion Industry

As stated above, our business operates squarely within the Circular Fashion Industry. The very idea of a circular economy takes a complete 360 degree turn from the traditional linear economy concept. The circular economy is based on these three principles;

Design out waste and pollution
Keep products and materials in use
Regenerate natural systems (Karagianni 2019)

These principles by default place the industry as a whole in a sustainably focused mindset.

A crucial part of this industry is upcycling, and this is the focus of this business. Upcycling can be defined as a process, “where waste — textile leftovers that would usually end up in landfill or incineration — is used to create products with a higher retail value than traditional recycled products.” (Aus et al. 2021) This waste generally comes in two forms, pre-consumer waste and post-consumer waste. There is already a focus in the industry on post-consumer waste and a lack of focus on pre-consumer waste. This business, however, does not have easy access to pre-consumer waste, although it already has a significant and growing stockpile of post-consumer waste. To acknowledge the importance of pre-consumer waste, the Company will be including educational components that focus on the entire waste stream (pre- and post-), and partner with existing businesses/organizations that are already focusing on this impact gap.

Another part of creating an environmentally sustainable business will be implementing ethical business practices in the Company’s business plan. The Company will incorporate the six characteristics central to an ethical business;

Institute strong, ethical leadership
In addition to a mission statement, create a core value statement and communicate the resulting code of conduct to all employees, vendors, and partners
Focus on integrity and fairness by using transparent lines of communication in all dealings with employees, vendors, partners, and customers
Demonstrate responsibility and respect for the environment, community, employees, partners, and customers
Develop loyal, solid relationships with employees, vendors, partners, and customers
Make decisions that demonstrate concern for the environment and people (Phillips, C. 2022)

The Company also hopes to implement UPMADE, a recent circular design business model. Developed by Dr. Aus Reet in 2014, UPMADE has a certification program that acts as a, “guideline and a verification system helping manufacturers to effectively integrate upcycling production and circular economic principles into their business,” and a software program that, “gives brands and manufacturers a wholistic and transparent view of their material flow so they can make the most of what they already have [making] it easy and fast for brands to create upcycled products.” (Aus 2022) Though the program focuses on pre-consumer waste fabric, the Company thinks the UPMADE program would offer invaluable insights into the industry.

IJD Denim Life Cycle

InJEANious Designs, NC breathes new life into discarded worn denim jeans by creating upcycled products that have purpose, thus diverting textiles from the waste stream and ultimately a landfill. Unlike recycling or downcycling glass and plastic, upcycling worn denim jeans requires a minimum of energy, equipment, and additional materials, resulting in a small footprint needed to reintroduce “new” products back into the marketplace.