The TOYOTA Optimist National Championships
The Challenge
Wakatere Boating Club who were the host for the TOYOTA Optimist National Championships, challenged the LUCKE to create buoyancy covers with as little environmental impact as possible.
The SolutionTo achieve this, we produced a quality, European made garment with a sublimation printed, custom design that has been future proofed by Toyota for annual event use. This alone is not where the positive impacts end and if we dive a a little deeper into this order you will see what we care about.
Devil in the details:
- This order utilised 3000 bottles that would have otherwise ended up in landfills.
- The garment fabric we use is a material made of 80% recycled polyester from PET plastic bottles with the remaining 20% being long life lycra . The plastic bottles were cleaned, sorted, and shredded into pellets, which were then melted into fibre. The resulting fabric has a significantly smaller environmental impact than traditional buoyancy covers made from virgin polyester.
- Our factory in Europe not only adheres to EU ethical labour laws but it is also certified Carbon Neutral along with the shipping of the product to NZ, which we think is pretty impressive.
- As our business is based on the circular economy we recognise that the end of life for our products is just as important, so we created the LUCKE Take Back program. This program allows our customers to return their used buoyancy covers to Optimist National Champs organisers and if they are no longer able to be used then will take them back and process them through our end of life partner.
- Through our commitment to 1% For The planet, we're proud to say that 73 trees were planted for this order.