Taking care of the resources of the world is a vital value for us, and that’s why we aim to minimize the amount of waste. We’ve always believed that already existing materials are the best materials there are, right from our start in 1985.
The way we consume and what materials we prefer in our home interior has a huge impact on our environment. A very common material in the textile industry, cotton, is notorius for splurging a lot of fresh water. Did you know, that growing 1 kg of cotton requires 11 000 litres of water?
To put it in other words: 1 kg recycled cotton rug saves 11 000 litres of water from our globes resources– and this is one of the reasons we’re so into using recycled cotton as a material in our rugs.
However, using recycled materials in our production has always been a very natural choice for us. In fact, our co-founder, Eija Rasinmäki, has used upcycled cotton in her design work since 1970. The re-use of existing material is not part of a trend, but has been a fundamental part of our company culture for over thirty years.
We have always believed, from the beginning, that our own hand-made production process must use upcycled or recycled materials that already exist. Our production takes place in India, because that’s the place where the textile industry exists and we want to be near our materials: they are locally sourced where woven.
There are two ways we take advantage of cotton material that would otherwise be waste:
1) The print rugs, for example those designed by Saana ja Olli, are woven from recycled yarn. That’s a process whereby material that is derived from cut-offs, scraps and leftovers from the clothing industry, is shredded into fibers and then re-spun into new yarn. This process takes place in a town called Panipat, which is known as the “recyclinghub”.
2) Most of our cotton rugs are woven from upcycled materials, in a town called Biswan. That means we re-use for example the cutting-edges of giant textile rolls and therefore transforms by-products, waste materials, useless, or unwanted objects into Finarte rugs.
Besides using recycled and upcycled cotton, we design our rugs and textiles from other sustainable materials, such as wool, jute and left-over leather. This spring we are launching our first rug that’s made of PET-material, from recycled plastic bottles. We couldn’t be more excited about this – stay tuned!