STARTUP
Neworn
Neworn is reinventing this hugely broken wheel with the vision of“extending the life of products while improving the lives of families sustainably”.Neworn enables the reuse of baby clothes by providing a marketplace, in the form of a mobile application, for parents to buy and sell their used baby clothes within a community of like-minded families. The app rewards and incentivizes eco-friendly behavior with loyalty points. With every transaction made, both parties earn loyalty points called Jades.These Jades can be spent on the App to obtain discount codes for the Neworn partner shops. This aims to help sustainable companies reach their target market as well as increase their sales sustainably and support regional trade.
Neworn's Story
Every second, the equivalent of one garbage truck of textile lands on a landfill or is burned (United Nations Environmental Program, 2021). This is a real societal problem – not only affecting parents but everyone – all of us.
In total, 85% of fast fashion clothing ends up in landfills. The material that most clothes in fast fashion are made of is polyester. The production releases three times more carbon emissions than cotton, and the material does not decompose in the ocean. The fashion industry is responsible for 10% of humanity’s carbon emissions and if it continues the same way it can grow to 26% in 2050 (Morgan McFall- Johnson, 2019).
Zooming in, Austria has a yearly textile waste of 221,800 tons. Only 17% are recycled or reused, meaning that 83% are being thrown away. (Umweltbundesamt, 2022)
This is a significant waste of resources and harmful to the environment. The fashion industry is one of the biggest polluters in the world. Fashion products make up 10% of humanity’s carbon emissions (Beth Howell, 2021).
When it comes to children’s clothes, the lifespan of the products is even shorter. Every time babies grow or the seasons change, the clothes need to be replaced. It’s prohibitively expensive, and young families are left with stacks of scarcely used clothing to dispose of. On top of this, baby clothes are expensive and must be bought every few months.