How sustainable is a vintage button shop?

Whether you are looking to make your wardrobe more environmentally friendly or reduce the impact of your already costly sewing hobby, choosing sustainable materials is key. Many of my customers are concerned about the environmental impact of the fashion industry. That's why they took to sewing in the first place, though there may be other reasons behind it, like creativity, or taking back control of what you wear, to name just a few. Buttons, of course, have to be in line with all these previous concerns.

Sustainable buttons, from left to right: Tagua nut, wood, Jet, Casein and glass.
Vintage materials are mostly either compostable or made from natural materials. Or both.

Reduce

Contrary to the global trend of fast fashion, a lot of people, myself included, prefer to select their garments carefully and with view to using them for many years. Whether you buy new, second hand or you decide to make your own, buttons do come in handy. Vintage buttons were made to last. Even the plastic ones are solid and not easily damaged. Many made by hand, carved, manually moulded or manufactured in short series. By choosing vintage buttons you will make sure that the garment you have made, or purchased and want to alter will be unique and durable. Even if they are made of more conventional plastic.

Extremely durable: as old as your grandma, will survive another 200 years.

Reuse

It is actually thanks to the quality and durability that buttons made fifty, sixty or even seventy years ago still look like new. Why make new when we can use something that is already here? Even plastic buttons have lower environmental impact if they are vintage than the ones you purchase in your haberdashery shop. Also, the modern day buttons were probably made using cheap labour, some inhumane conditions, etc. 

Vintage buttons, on the other hand, were manufactured in the countries they were sold. I am not saying that they did not take their toll on somebody's heath - Bakelite production, for example, used dangerous chemicals (this could be one of the reasons it is no longer the type of plastics that company go for). However, they are already here, and the best we can do is to make use of them. I did have questions from customers in the past, who wanted to make sure they are dealing with vintage, rather than newly made items before buying.

And no worries, once stabilised, Bakelite is no longer toxic, unless you start a chemical experiment with it.

Recycle

While you will find the Internet flooded with ideas of how to recycle buttons making bowls (using large amounts of glue), lamp shades and jewellery, the simplest way is just to keep your buttons in a box after you decide to get rid of a garment, and give them new life afterwards in another garment.

My favourite pendant, made of buttons, called 'Evil Eye' by AI.

I have supplied sustainable buttons to businesses which were selling conscious collections, reusing fabric from factories and focusing on biodegradable materials. And vintage buttons may surprise you as there are plenty that fulfil this requirement!

There is Tagua nut, or corozo, which is not only sustainable to produce, but also, in the long term, biodegradable in an environmentally friendly way, as it is a totally natural material. The same goes for wood, and there are plenty of wooden buttons made in mid-century, which were actually made to imitate plastic. There are other natural materials such as glass, jet and mother of pearl, none of which poses any threat to the environment.

And some buttons were actually made of recycled materials in the first place. Celluloid buttons were often backed by a tin sheet, and on some you can still read what can of food they had belonged to!

This tin sheet had been part of a tin box prior to backing this buckle.

Do you have a dedicated tin box to buttons removed from old garments that you are planning to use one day? How many of them are vintage? And how often do you open it just to take a look and imagine where you are going to use them? The vintage button shop goes a step further and sources unsold dead stocks from old haberdasheries. I often open a random box, just to look at the and dream what they may be used for.

Packaging

Over the years I have changed packaging several times to meet the requirements of my customers. However, I have decided that what matters most is the environmental impact of it. Therefore, I have completely switched to paper bags, stickers and protective material. I even make tiny labels for button bags with leftovers from shipping labels. 

I haven't found, though, a good alternative for the bubble envelope. Instead, I use one that allows you to separate the plastic and paper layers and dispose of them in the right place to be recycled. Personally, I recycle the bubble wrap from other purchases me or my family makes. Even my friends know that if they receive an item richly wrapped in it, they keep it for my business. I really only use it when shipping very fragile items, like buckles, or glass buttons. Cardboard from recycled packaging is a valid alternative, though not always.

I found the glassine bags the best packaging material. 
And they can be beautifully stamped using my button stamps!

Lately I have seen people started sending out envelopes made of puffed cardboard, which is a biodegradable replacement of the bubble mailers. Hopefully this comes to my country soon. I have looked for it to no avail, at least where I live. If you know any supplier in Spain of such envelopes, let me know! 

Carbon footprint

I would really like to say that there is no carbon footprint on the overseas orders. Etsy, for one thing, assures they have offset any of it. Have I planted trees? Yes, many times, some are still growing, and also a few bushes. But planting trees alone is not going to stop damage to the planet.

Avoiding costly courier shipping, as the door-to-door service is the one that bears the greatest impact. Instead, the buttons usually travel slowly by post, along with thousands other traditional letters before they are delivered to your mailbox. This way, they share the cost and the carbon footprint. Have you ever thought why shipping an online order to your local shop is usually free of charge? Because they do it along with the daily or weekly delivery / returns of other products and orders. Click and collect is not only cheap and efficient, but has way smaller carbon footprint. Think about that the next time you buy online.

As you can see, buying vintage buttons can be truly environmentally friendly. The materials, the packaging, the delivery and the sheer fact that you are resorting to something already manufactured, and with enough quality to last another seventy years - they all make a difference!