About Us
Our Story
Native Salt is an affordable, sustainable, stylish clothing brand. Our mission is to show people that you can be stylish at the same time as wearing environmentally conscious clothing, and it doesn’t have to cost a fortune.
The foundation of Native Salt is passion for change. We believe that change is coming, and we all have to do our part. By purchasing from Native Salt, you are not only supporting an independent sustainable clothing brand, you are also giving money to charity! This is because we give 20% of our profits to a local marine conservation charity, which changes every three months. You can read more about this on our Charity page.
At Native Salt, we try to support other independent businesses as much as we can, and use UK suppliers for all of our products so that everything is locally sourced. This reduces the need for long distance shipping which cuts CO2 emissions and supports sustainable manufacturing.
Our Organic Clothing
One of our missions at Native Salt is to normalise the use of organic cotton. We hope that one day the use of environmentally friendly options for clothing will outweigh non-organic options.
The processing of non-organic cotton uses a large amount of chemicals. For instance, the use of heavy metals, chlorine, and chemical dyes are not unheard of in the manufacturing of non-organic cotton.Non-organic cotton is also more in demand and supply, and is usually machine-picked to cope with this. This damages cotton fibres in the picking process, leading to loss and wastage. This production comprises 10% of total global carbon emissions, dries up water sources and pollutes rivers and streams. Moreover, 85% of all textiles go to dumps each year.
Organic cotton, on the other hand, uses safer alternatives to chemical dyes and whiteners, including natural or water-based dyes and peroxide for whitening. Organic cotton is also completely handpicked, preserving the purity of every fibre and ensuring that no fibre is damaged in the process. Being handpicked ensures these fibres don’t get weakened or broken, resulting in softer and more durable, long lasting products. Overall, organic cotton is a much softer, hypoallergenic cotton and is therefore better for your skin. The other upside of organic cotton is that it lasts a long time, reducing the need for a damaging fashion industry.
Because, of course, the most important benefit of organic clothing is protecting the ecosystem, reducing waste of water and ensuring a safer working environment for the farmers and manufacturers.By purchasing from Native Salt, you are contributing towards sustainable fashion.
Our Packaging
At Native Salt, we strive to produce as little waste and environmental impact as possible. Therefore, we only use recycled and biodegradable packaging products.
Plastic is a massive threat to our oceans, with 8 million metric tons of plastic being dumped into the oceans every year. That’s about 17.6 billion pounds. By 2050, ocean plastics will outweigh all of the oceans’ fish. Moreover, plastic bags don’t biodegrade, they photo degrade. This means that the bag breaks down into smaller and smaller toxic pieces. It can take between 400 and 1000 years for a plastic bag to break down. As plastic breaks down in the ocean, it releases chemicals which further contaminate the sea.
For our packaging we use one piece of recycled and biodegradable tissue paper, one recycled and biodegradable sticker and one bio-poly mailer bag, which is completely plastic free, recyclable, compostable and biodegradable.
About The Owner
Native Salt is founded and owned by Kristy Stewart. Kristy is from Edinburgh, Scotland and has always had a passion for the ocean. She has a love for scuba diving, surfing, stand-up paddle boarding, kayaking and generally everything to do with the sea. Kristy has also spent 2 years living and travelling in Australia. During this time, she noticed the awareness of environmental issues that Australian people shared and an easy access to sustainable clothing and living. This is something she felt very passionate about and wanted to bring home to Scotland with her. This is why Native Salt was formed.