Our initiatives

Recycling projects, carbon offsets and plastic reduction – these are some of the actions and projects that we have initiated to reduce our environmental footprint.

GLOBAL

Fristads is working on developing a sustainable service offer and we have launched several recycling pilot projects together with approximately ten of our larger dealers and direct customers. Since different types of customers have different needs, we have developed three distinct recycling flows: Repair, Reuse and Recycle. In the pilot phase, the focus has been on testing the flows, identifying the flaws and understanding the costs associated with managing the clothes that we produce when they are discarded by the customer. In 2024, we will step up the work to expand our pilot projects to more customers and establish recycling as a regular part of our sustainability offer.

Sweden

For several years, Fristads, along with other private and public stakeholders, has been a part of the research and development project Autofreight. The project is focused on maximising loads and reducing congestion by using High-Capacity Transport (HCT) vehicles between the port of Gothenburg and Viared, where our warehouse is located. Since HCT vehicles can carry more goods than regular lorries and semi-trailers, they use less fuel per per cubic metre of cargo, which can reduce emissions by as much as 30%. Fristads increased deliveries by HCT to the warehouse from 1% in 2021 to 13% in 2023 and has a goal of making all deliveries from Gothenburg by HCT in the future.

Sweden

Fristads aims to reduce its reliance on plastic and to reach this goal we have made several upgrades to our packaging. As of 2024, we package our products in bags made of 100 percent recycled plastic. We have also added a bag size and eliminated the handles to ensure that we are only using as much plastic as necessary for each order. Based on our current use of plastic bags, we estimate that we will reduce the plastic used for this type of packaging by 27 percent with these changes, while the use of virgin plastic will be eliminated completely. When it comes to plastic used during the transport of products from the factory to our warehouse, we use master poly bags instead of wrapping each individual garment in plastic, whenever possible.

Global

Ever since we launched our Outdoor collection in 2020, we have offset the carbon dioxide emissions associated with the production of the garments. In 2023, Fristads contributed €11,235 toward a biomass project at a factory in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, preventing 10,200 tonnes of CO2 from being emitted into the atmosphere. The project, which is featured on the UN carbon offset platform Climate Neutral Now, helps the factory switch from burning fossil fuels to using renewable biomass from nearby eucalyptus and pine tree plantations. This is the fourth year that Fristads uses a portion of the sales from the Outdoor collection to offset carbon emissions.

Germany

As a part of our work to inspire our users to make sustainable choices, Fristads, together with the German trade magazine Deutsches Handwerksblatt, has established the Klimaretter Award for craftsmen. The purpose of the award is to provide an incentive for companies in the building and construction sector to share their best climate-saving ideas, investments and strategies. It is also a way to put the spotlight on sustainability efforts in an industry that is key to curbing emissions of greenhouse gases. The first prize winner of the award was Rudolf Meier GmbH, a construction company in the Ostwestfalen-Lippe region that sports two biomass silo heaters, solar power generation, LED lighting and a wildlife refuge.

Sweden

Fristads has partnered with Stockholms Stadsmission, a non-profit organisation dedicated to supporting disenfranchised populations in the Swedish capital. Through the partnership, Stockholms Stadsmission sells garments from Fristads’ return department in three of their secondhand stores in Stockholm. By giving these clothes a second chance we reduce textile waste and decrease the need for resources that would have been needed to create new products. All the proceeds from the sales of our workwear are donated to Stockholms Stadsmission and used to support their work to combat social exclusion, homelessness and unemployment among society’s most vulnerable people.

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