Our journey to groundwater neutrality
In 2020, together with Climate Sponsorship, we planted 165 trees as part of a local forest reforestation project. A first step on our journey towards our stated goal of becoming groundwater neutral.
A new chapter - The MYMARINI forest
Originally, we had planned to plant another 835 trees in 2021. But then everything turned out differently. We were given the unique opportunity to plant 30,000 trees by 2023 instead. While we couldn't believe it ourselves at first, the idea of our "MYMARINI forest" became more and more concrete in our minds. And not only there. In 2021, we facilitated the planting of 12,000 trees, to be followed by another 10,000 in 2022 and 8,000 in 2023. While each individual tree planted will generate 200 liters of additional groundwater annually, the 30,000 trees will generate a total of 6 million liters per year. A lot of numbers, but also a lot of liters.
"MYMARINI was the largest planting partner we had in 2021, enabling the planting of more than half of all the trees planted as part of the Drinking Water Planting Project."
Michael Garvs, Climate Sponsorship
Using the life cycle assessments provided by our producers, we were able to calculate the water footprint for all swimwear collections made with ECONYL® yarns.
And we are more than proud to announce that we are already offsetting our water footprint in 2021. Each year, we can put the amount of water we produce in excess of our consumption into a virtual "groundwater savings account" to be credited for the next year. In this way, we have already been able to calculate that all designs made with ECONYL® yarns will be groundwater neutral for 2022 as well.
Around 90% of our collections are thus certified as groundwater-neutral.
What remains to be done?
Planting our own trees, so as a team we will be holding a planting event at the end of April 2022 to spend time together in the forest, getting our hands dirty and watching our trees grow. We can hardly wait!
Furthermore, it would be nice to offset our water footprint for the rest of our collections in the future. But to be honest, this will take some time. For many materials it is not easy to get accurate data about the actual water consumption along the supply chain. In addition, while we believe it is very important to support groundwater generation near Hamburg, it is also time to compensate at the production sites where the water is consumed. Therefore, we are currently researching WASH projects in Uganda, for example, where our cotton grows, as well as in Italy, where most of our fabrics are made.
We are happy to have you on this journey with us and will keep you updated on our little MYMARINI forest.
