Our 2020 collection ‘Recollection’ is a celebration of 20 years of reducing waste in a colourful way: 20 years of SUSAN BIJL. We are looking back at milestones that mark important events and developments during those years.
Around 2016 – 2017, governments all around the world finally started to discourage the use of plastic bags. Even though we were already offering an alternative to the single-use plastic bags, we realized we had to think ahead and keep on trying to decrease our footprint and make our business more sustainable. Because recycled ripstop nylon wasn’t easily available at that time, we investigated what would be the best alternative. Bluesign® is a holistic system that provides solutions in sustainable processing and manufacturing to industries and brands. We changed to 100% Bluesign certified ripstop nylon from 2016.
In 2017 we introduced our Care & Repair service, offering free repairs to our customers for bags that have a hole or rip. With Care & Repair, we hope to inspire consumers to buy less and show them that broken items can be repaired and used for many years again.
Another sustainable measure we took in 2017 was our Leftover collection. In November that year, we introduced a collection made entirely of leftover fabric that was laying around in the warehouse of our factory. Besides finishing all (unusable) pieces of fabric, it also created a bunch of colour combinations that surpassed the original collections.
In the same year, we made a small adjustment to The New Pouch, but the effect couldn’t be more significant. Small loops and a strap turned the pouch into a small shoulder bag, giving it an extra function. We introduced additions in a special collection. We asked fellow Rotterdammer and designer Bertjan Pot to design a print for our bags, as we had done the year before with Experimental Jetset and 75B. Instead of offering a design, Bertjan proposed to use six colours instead of the usual two. After this collection The New Pouch in its new form became indispensable.
Photos left to right: A repaired shopping bag, care & repair logo by 75B, the Bertjan Pot campaign by Jan Bijl.
Side: Leftover fabrics in our warehouse.