MISSION AND VISION

Mission

To make beautiful garments, toys and shoes with honesty and enterprise.

Vision

People: Provide a healthy, safe, enjoyable and rewarding environment to our employees.

Products: Provide beautifully designed, safe, high quality products.

Partners: Develop strong and long lasting relationships with like-minded customers and suppliers.

Planet: Be a responsible global citizen.

Financial: Offer a healthy long term return to shareholders while being mindful of our overall responsibilities.

PEOPLE

A large proportion of workers in the garment sector are hired on an informal basis which means they are not protected by the law, much of the time are paid below the minimum wage, have no social or medical security and are forced to do excessive overtime.

When we first started Albetta we decided to make things ourselves because we believed it was the best way to provide our staff with a great working environment where they could benefit from interesting and variable work and receive good wages, benefits, medical insurance and a pension plan.

The Albetta factory complies with the principles of the Ethical Trade Initiative (ETI) which promotes workplaces that are free from exploitation and discrimination where workers enjoy conditions of freedom and security and equity. The ETI works closely with the International Labour Organisation to set standards and limits on working hours and overtime, health and safety conditions in the workplace, minimum working age, human rights and trade unions, wages and benefits. Every couple of years we undergo a SMETA audit which checks whether we are conforming to these principles. Our last audit was conducted in March 2023 and the results are freely available to our clients.

RECYCLING AND THE ENVIRONMENT

100 billion new pieces of clothing are produced each year from new fabrics partly the consequence of fast fashion where cheap on trend garments are bought, worn once and thrown in the back of a cupboard or landfill. In the UK alone an estimated USD 15 billion of unworn clothes remain at the back of the cupboard. The garment sector is one of the world's most polluting industries and the mismanagement of water during cotton production has turned parts of the earth's surface into desert BUT we also know that if we extend the life of a garment by 9 months we reduce its carbon and water footprint by 30%. It has been Albetta's policy from the early days to make our garments from high quality fabrics, thread and accessories which are free from harmful chemicals that can be washed and dried multiple times. All our garments undergo wash and colour fastness tests. You may have to pay a little bit more for an Albetta garment but in the long run it is more economical and better for the planet.

In our industry there is enormous waste in the pre-production (leftover fabric) and post-production (left over garment) phases. We have schemes in place to re-use and recycle all our waste fabric and any excess garments are donated to charities or given to our employees.

FABRIC

Cotton covers 2-3% of the world's arable land providing income to more than 250 million people. However current cotton production methods are unsustainable posing serious challenges in the years ahead.

FACTS

The water required to produce 1 T-shirt (2,700 litres) is enough to sustain one person for almost 3 years!

Cotton farming uses more pesticides than any other industry about 15% of the global total which contribute to the early deaths, every year, of thousands of farmers.

Organisations around the globe are introducing solutions to create sustainability in farming. Some focus on irrigation techniques to save water or manage soil nutrients to ensure productive fields without using pesticides. Others help strengthen communities through fair trade or improved labour laws.

The Better Cotton Initiative (www.bettercotton.org) takes a holistic approach to sustainable cotton cultivation by training farmers to grow cotton in a more environmentally, socially and economically responsible way.

BCI aims to transform cotton production worldwide by developing Better Cotton as a sustainable mainstream commodity. To achieve this mission, they bring together cotton's complex supply chain, from farmers to retailers, in an effort to increase commitment to and sourcing of sustainable cotton.

Albetta started sourcing Better Cotton in 2018 and we made a pledge that in the next 5 years we intended to move all our cotton to sustainable cotton sources such as BCI or GOTTS (Organic). As of 2022 all our cotton fabrics are either BCI or GOTTS.

Our Snugglie toys are made from recycled PET bottles. See HERE

SAFETY AND QUALITY

According to the Albetta Vision we will provide 'beautifully designed, safe, high quality products'.

The lists of banned or restricted hazardous chemicals in the USA, Europe (REACH) and Japan are constantly changing and growing so we work closely with our fabric and accessory suppliers and printers to to ensure that all our fabrics and accessories are fully compliant with current legislation.

All our garment fabrics have been certified by the OKEO-TEX STANDARD 100 which guarantees they are FREE from harmful chemicals which may cause allergies and irritations. OKEO-TEX is a worldwide consistent and independent testing system which in most cases goes far beyond national and international standards.

All our toys are CE certified which means every part of the toy (fabric, thread and accessories) meet strict European standards on health, safety and the environment.

Fabrics are carefully labelled and registered within our Quality Management System to ensure complete traceability from our warehouse in Vietnam to final point of sale so that in the unlikely event that there is a quality issue we can trace the garment back to the original bulk fabric.

Our QMS covers every aspect of our operation including core high risk areas such as metal policy, needle control and testing mentioned above.