C&A has released the world’s first Cradle to Cradle certified Gold denim jeans. The jeans innovation posed both a material and design challenge that required designers to be open-minded and flexible in the way they utilized materials.

Cradle to Cradle is a science-based quality certification that acknowledges continuous improvement and innovation of products and processes. The release of C&A’s jeans comes on the heels of the first ever Cradle to Cradle certified Gold, fully compostable T-shirt collection launched in 2017. The denim jeans provide an example of ways to collaborate within the industry to split the materials into biological and technical nutrients to create a closed-loop system of design.

The challenge was in creating a garment that has the same performance as traditional models, but doing so in a way that is either 100 per cent technical or 100 per cent biological to allow them to return to their respective cycles at the end of use. Another option, which was adopted for the jeans, was to make them easily separable so the biological and technical nutrients can return to their respective cycles.

All the components in the jeans were made to be easily separable so that the biological and technical nutrients can return to their respective cycles.