Sustainability & Ethics
Photographer: @olaytana, @mancey_photography & @amy.longden in frame.
Printing, postage and packaging of the magazine
What printing company do you use and why?
We use Corsham Print, a printing company from Wiltshire. Using a local print company was one of our goals, and a print company that also share our sustainable values. On their website they state “At Corsham Print our environmental impact is top of our agenda.”
Ways there strive to be sustainable are:
Using vegetable oil-based inks and toners.
Low energy production and use of LED drying.
FSC Certification of paper.
Carbon capture with Woodland Trust and World Land Trust.
You can read more about their sustainability here and an article by them on the environmental impact of print here.
Do you have a takeback scheme for your physical products?
We do!
On the back page of all of our magazines we have a ‘What’s Next?” section where we outline various ways the reader can continue the life of the magazine that isn’t sending to landfill.
One of these options is our takeback scheme. You can return your magazine at any of our events for a 15% off voucher of the next edition (the edition next to be released after the edition purchased).
Other suggestions we have on the back page include:
Donate your magazine to a local primary school or after school club to be cut up and used again in arts and crafts.
Pass your magazine onto a friend who may be interested in slow fashion and living.
Leave your magazine with your local salon, dentist or anyone who has a coffee table in a waiting room needing to be filled.
Recycle your magazine, but check with you local council first!
What packaging do you use?
So far we have managed to source exclusively second hand packaging from businesses who have extra stock or have discontinued using that certain packaging.
Events
How do you ensure your events are accessible?
We ask our venues plenty of questions about wheelchair accessibility to make sure we have a space that is suitable for everyone.
We also aim to choose venues that are easily accessible to public transport and has good general and disabled parking options nearby.
In terms of catering, we make sure to offer food to suit a range of diets, allergies and intolerances. We also make sure to offer alcohol free options when there is a bar.
Our last event venue was Future Leap on Gloucester Road.
How do you keep waste and plastic usage to a minimum during these events?
We are constantly researching and exploring ways to reduce our waste with progress always to be made. Some of the ways we keep waste and plastic usage to a minimum include:
Encouraging everyone to use reusable water bottles and make water stations easily available. When we sell water, we sell canned only instead of plastic.
Reusing A-boards and other signage wherever possible.
Borrowing, lending, hiring and swapping kit with other event professionals instead of buying everything new.
Not printing any unnecessary paper and correctly recycling what we do use.
How do you choose suppliers and caterers for these events?
We aim to choose as many local and independent suppliers as possible at events. This reduces travel miles emissions and also puts money back into the local economy.
We also look at a range of sustainability critrian when choosing between suppliers.
Specific to catering, we have chosen to only supply vegetarian and vegan food throughout our events.
Article Contributors
How do you ensure diversity within your contributors?
We actively encourage diversity within our contributors and are proud to be able to publish work by a talented and inclusive group of people. Ways we do this include:
Writing inclusive castings, specifically encouraging minority groups to apply.
We keep our castings posted far and wide instead of only taking articles on from people already within our network and from exclusively professional sites like LinkedIn.
We allow for reasonable adjustments during the process of selecting contributors and thereafter. Reasonable adjustments are changes or modifications that an employer makes to remove or reduce a disadvantage related to someone’s experience or disability.
What sustainability criteria do your contributors have to meet?
We don’t a specific set of criteria to meet for contributors, but we do research each contributor individually to ensure that they share our sustainable and ethical values. An example of where we wouldn’t take a contributor on would be if they blog about sustainable fashion but also actively promote fast fashion.
Models, Photographers, MUAs, Stylists
How do you ensure diversity within your creatives?
Diversity within our creatives is very important to us. We encourage diversity by:
Open communication with creatives on shoots directed by the magazine to ensure that the location/studio is accessible to everyone, lunch provided accommodates everyone’s requirements etc.
Writing inclusive castings, specifically encouraging minority groups to apply.
When outreaching directly to creatives, we actively try to outreach to a variety of minority groups. This includes contacting agencies that specifically work with disabled models, models over 40 etc to work with us on projects.
We only work with designers who can cater to a range of dress sizes for our models, instead of picking models to suit only the small, out of date sample size range offered by some designers unfortunately still.
What sustainability criteria do your designers have to meet?
Different designers have different focuses when it comes to sustainability. For example some focus in on being Made in England, some use traditional artisan techniques, some are at the cutting edge of turning old into new. Some designers are also more established and some are new and with lower budgets.
Therefore to keep a range of designers in the publication, we don’t focus on them having certain criteria like being B-Corp. Instead, we look at the bigger picture.
Some key points that are important to us however are as follows:
The designers cater to a range of sizes and actively promote diversity within their models, staff and general media.
They are able to provide information on their supply chain.
They are committed to sustainable practices throughout their business, including but not limited to waste reduction, sustainable materials, using recyclable packaging.
How do you choose studios and locations for these photo shoots?
If we hire a studio for a photo shoot we choose a location which is suitable to everyone’s accessibility requirements. This may include ensuring wheelchair accessibility and close proximity to parking/ public transport.
How do you ensure the well fair of your creative team before, during and after the photo shoots?
With a background as a model, our Founder Poppy is keen to ensure the well fair of everyone who takes part in photo shoots.
We schedule breaks in every shoot to eat, rest etc. We encourage our team to also speak up and take 5 minutes where and when needed. Shoot days can be long!
On location, as part of scouting the area we also make sure to take into account variables like where the nearest bathrooms are, if any of the walks are long and/or uphill and the general weather conditions. If any of these variables will cause any of the team discomfort or difficulty we will happily move things around and accommodate.
If a creative hasn’t worked with The Slow Approach before we will check their credibility by searching through their previous work, tags, credits, online reviews and asking people for direct references.
An open line of communication is kept with all creatives before, during and after the shoot to discuss any issues or concerns they may have.
We are open to feedback, providing creatives with a feedback form after a shoot and encouraging them to tell us about the positives and improvements to be made with our photo shoots.