Project CECE is an online platform for buying sustainable and fair fashion, offering access to selected brands and products that meet five sustainability criteria: Fair trade, Environmentally friendly, Vegan, Locally produced, Good cause. The feature of being able to search for products specifically according to materials and certificates is particularly great. This is a real boon for anyone who has been involved with sustainable fashion for a while. It is also nice that there are many small brands that are not found on every platform.
Sustainable fashion consumption is much more than just buying new clothes. However, investing in high quality products that have been produced in a fair and resource-friendly way is a good starting point for the journey towards a sustainable lifestyle. We had a chat with Eva from the Project CECE , who introduced us to the project.
What is the CECE Project about? What was the motivation?
We have been collecting online sustainable and conscious clothing since 2016 to make shopping easier for people. We, the founders of Project Cece, are three students from Amsterdam (studying physics and astronomy and business and economics). At some point we started to think seriously about why we still buy clothes that we know for a fact are made under bad conditions for humans, animals and the environment. The search for sustainable and fair fashion proved difficult. This gave rise to the idea of generating a web shop where it is easy and quick for every buyer to see where an item of clothing comes from and how it was produced.
Our goal is to forge a positive change in the fashion industry. We see so much greenwashing going on and according to a survey by Deloitte today’s youngsters don’t trust the motives of today’s leaders in business in the fashion industry towards sustainability. We are making it easy for them to discover brands who started with sustainability in mind and offer them a trustworthy alternative. Making the small, sustainable webshops of today the industry leaders of the future, is the ultimate goal.
What do you understand by sustainability in the fashion industry?
The value chain in the fashion industry is very complex and often not very transparent, so it is not always easy to say clearly what is sustainable or conscious. For example, a product that is fairly traded is not also good for the environment. Or a jacket made of vegan leather is not necessarily fair trade. What we do is gather all the information so that the buyers can decide what is conscious and sustainable for them.
Environmental friendly
sustainable materials are used, environmentally friendly production, such as water management and the use of hazardous chemicals
Fair Trade
fair and safe working conditions as well as fair wages in production, quality seals that verify fair trade include GOTS, Fair Wear Foundation and Fairtrade
Vegan
entire brand only produces using vegan materials, no animal materials are used such as wool, silk or leather, and that no animal dyes are used
Local production
local production as all production carried out within Europe, your product does not have to travel as far before it hangs in your wardrobe, and that there is often (but certainly not always) better control of the working conditions
Good Cause
Some brands also want to give something extra back to the world, they plant trees, they support charities, they provide free training and health care to the communities where their products are produced, and sometimes they give away free products
„We think the main point is to know the income of all suppliers in the supply chain (fair income) and to produce environmentally friendly. That’s why these two criterions are choosen to be the precondition to get on our website.“
The impact analysis team researches all the brands on Project Cece. Brands need to fill out an extensive questionnaire with questions about their production and values. They also ask for evidence for their sustainability claims, in the form of certifications, third-party reports and recent pictures.
More infos are provided here: https://www.projectcece.de/sustainability-standards/
So next time you’re looking for fairly produced and sustainable clothing, you’ve found a good starting point. Feel free to spread the word and share!
Online-Plattform nachhaltige und ehrliche Mode | Project Cece
Photo copyright by Cece Project