We’ve made it! For the third and final launch of Db x Benjamin Ortega, we’ve developed a collection of products which emit 30% less CO2 than anything else we have made, designed data you can wear and worked closely with you, our amazing Db community. Together we’ve opened the dialogue around sustainability and collected over 584 bags of trash from our streets, forests, mountains, and beaches.
Ultimately, we’ve changed the path of our business. So buckle up, get your browse on and have a look at the collection below.
For the third and final Db x Benjamin Ortega collection we fully rebuilt the classics you love with 30% less CO2e and 30% less water consumption. We’re proud of what we have achieved and truly believe transparency is key to wide-spread change. In order to practice what we preach, we’ve published our workings as well as our results. Dive deeper into the project below.
Dig into the details
By studying the design and development of our products, we knew we could Do Better. We questioned our bags’ features, removed those that weren’t cutting it and if they were deemed a necessity, replaced them with ones that did. We strove for solutions that wouldn’t compromise on quality, learned what could be done, couldn’t be done (yet) and became more aware of the limitations of our industry.
A bill of materials (BOM) is a comprehensive list of parts, items, assemblies, and other materials required to create a product. Think of it like a recipe, or a content label. Each product has its own bill of materials.
We’ve addressed every piece of every product in this collection, asking ourselves - how does this affect our planet? How can we lessen that affect? The design team have picked apart the sketches they spent ten years perfecting, and put them back together with better alternatives - totalling over 170 revisions.
Not only are we challenging ourselves, but the fashion industry as a whole. By publishing our bill of materials for each product, we’re throwing down the gauntlet and hoping other major players will do the same.
You wouldn’t buy a diamond without knowing its carat or clarity - so why buy a responsible bag without knowing its metrics? We needed you guys to see the data we’d pulled, because we needed this project to be transparent, but something told us a spreadsheet wasn’t going to cut it.
Benni and the Db team collaborated with Dany Wang, a Paris based graphic designer. We tasked him with bringing the sexiness of a perfectly-formatted spreadsheet into the collection. Dany helped us to design data you could wear - a symbol of progress strapped to your back (literally). The result hit right; proving to us that Doing Better can also create an edge that feels desirable.
To Dobetter we needed a way to measure it and thankfully, this is where the Sustainable Apparel Coalition and their Higg Index stepped in. These guys have become an industry standard in social and environmental impact measurement for the textile and fashion industry. They enabled us to measure and regulate our bill of materials for this collection. We saw the data, we learnt from it, and now we’re showing it to you.
For this collection we put together a multidisciplinary team to push against the status quo of our business. We brought together a strong internal team of sustainability specialists, designers and marketers and partnered them up with environmentalists, athletes, and partners like HIGG, Choose, Vandre and more. Each person brought a unique perspective and craft to the project, helping us to Dobetter.
The Dobetter challenge went live 5 days ago, and so far you have (unsurprisingly) smashed all of our expectations. The epicenter of the challenge formed in Biarritz; led by Benni, some friends and volunteers from the Surfrider Foundation. It rolled out in waves from there - with pick-ups in places from Argentina to Tanzania to Bali. We would have struggled to clear 584 bags of trash by ourselves in a month, but together, we cleared it in four days. We always Dobetter together.
- Benjamin Ortega
If you’re eyeing up a new Benni bag and know its arrival will relegate your old faithful Db to the back of the wardrobe, don’t sweat. We’ve partnered with Vandre to give Norwegian Db fans the option to resell and renew their old bags. Your bag will be primped, primed and (nearly) restored to its original self before being made available to buy second hand and have another life full of adventures. Find out more below.