ELK seamlessly weaves sustainability into its designs for the future

ELK started out in Melbourne as a husband and wife team, but despite growing into a fully-fledged fashion brand, the ethical and sustainable values they founded it on have held fast. Still working closely with independent makers, ELK makes it their business to know where their products are coming from, what they are made from and how they’ve been made.

Focusing on the product, people and planet, ELK has a dedicated team devoted to making the business as sustainable as possible and creating change for the better. By being transparent on their environmental journey, they hope to inspire and encourage other businesses to do the same. Here Marnie Goding, Creative Director and Co-founder of ELK, and Erika Martin, ELK’s Head of Ethics and Sustainability, share their sustainable story and some of the ways they are reducing their impact on the planet.

Stripping back the packaging

Working closely with Australia Post, Erika says one of the first priorities for ELK was looking at how it sent out its parcels.

“At the time we were doing about 15,000 online orders a year. And in the past couple of years, the online business has grown significantly. Now we're doing more than 40,000 online orders a year and saving plastic by changing what we ship these orders in,” she says.

Looking under the bonnet of freight emissions

Aside from packaging, Erika tells us that one of ELK’s biggest considerations is the carbon emissions produced from their freight and shipping. To look at this, they have been using a tailored Australia Post report that summarises their freight carbon emissions. “That's really helped us to make informed decisions about how we can best minimise our freight emissions, and balance that with cost and delivery service times,” Erika says.

Having the information Erika says has been really valuable for the team. It has highlighted “the stark difference in emissions between air freight and road freight so they're empowered to make informed decisions. We can also share that information with our customers to help them choose the best transport method for their online orders against time requirements,” she says. 

All in the data

Marnie says to help reach their environmental goals, they have a dedicated sustainability team to run their emissions data and measure their impact. “You can only make meaningful change when you know what your initial impact is,” Marnie says. “Being able to set goals, have targets and measured ways to track progress, allows us to say, ‘Well, this year, we improved something by a certain percentage,’ and that's really impactful and motivating for our team,” she says.

Sharing the knowledge

To reach their ethical and environmental goals, Marnie acknowledges the importance of collaboration and knowledge sharing through partnerships such as that with Australia Post. 
“I think that in this journey every business is on to make their business more sustainable, we can't do it on our own. We need partners and collaborators to do it with us,” she says. 

Ethical production and materials

Marnie believes that the fashion industry has a great deal of responsibility for the impact it makes. On their journey to making ELK a more sustainable business, Marnie says they’ve had to interrogate their supply chain, materials, production processes and impact on the communities they work in. Marnie says they have done this by focusing on three areas – product, people and planet. With Erika driving the process, Marnie says they’ve been able to “really deep-dive into all of those areas and really drill down into ways that we can continually make change for the better.”

The future

As to the future Marnie believes as citizens of this world and as businesses, we all have a responsibility to look at the impact we're having by the way we consume and behave. “Businesses like ELK and Australia Post are really showing other businesses the way to move forward,” she says. “It's not a lifestyle option. It's actually essential that we make these changes.”

Erika adds that the changes already underway are exciting steps for the future. “We're starting to get a lot more momentum towards a circular economy and that requires all the stakeholders to be involved – recyclers, packaging suppliers, providers like Australia Post as well as brands. And we are having the conversations that need to be had. The future’s looking a little bit brighter.”