Did you ever wonder what kids thought about ocean trash?

Our newest partner, Spanish clothing brand Bobo Choses, did and took creativity to a new level. Working under the premise that children can inspire and teach adults about how to care for the Earth, Bobo Choses asked kids around the world to make drawings about how they would stop ocean pollution.

The results were creative, funny and insightful. They received drawings of everything from a ‘water earth’ (sounds about right) to cat-like machines that transform ocean plastics into bubbles. Bobo Choses was so inspired they created an entire campaign and clothing line around these drawings called W.I.M.A.M.P. It’s a little long right? But when you know what it means it sticks in your head: Worldwide Inventive Minds Against Monsters of Pollution.

We’re excited to announce this newest partner in ocean conservation and their creative line of clothing promoting organic materials, creative designs, new ideas and youth engagement. You can even go to the W.I.M.A.M.P. site to learn about new activities, get kids involved, share drawings and get an exclusive member patch.

We asked Bobo Choses CEO, Joaquim Esperalba Esquerra a few questions about partnering with Ocean Conservancy. His responses are below.

Does Bobo Choses have an overall sustainability of environmental ethic or policy? I see a theme in the clothing so was wondering.

In Bobo Choses, sustainability is one of our core values. In 2015 we started a programme aiming to make such value a tangible reality. As a consequence, we started working with Made-by, a UK based NGO that helps companies to transform its sustainable goals into a clear strategy.

In the first year, we approved a Code of Conduct and a Compliance Handbook that all suppliers that work for us should follow. In the last two years we have been working to implement it.

Since our professional environment is made of small companies and manufacturers implementing the Compliance Handbook has proved a progressive project in order to make this transformation hand in hand with them. Sustainability is a neverending work in progress and we feel that aligning as many partners, clients and suppliers is the best way to achieve it.

Apart from the social and labor compliance, we also tackled the issue of sustainable fabrics. We are part of a EU funded programme called ECAP (European Clothing Action Plan) which aims at improving sustainability in the European fashion industry. We committed to converting the traditional cotton that we used into organic cotton by 60% of the total output. Although this is a target that we set for 2018, we have achieved it this year. On top of this, we are also slowly introducing recycled fabrics, such as Polyester, in order to reduce waste.

Nevertheless, some of these fabrics are still under evaluation in order to achieve the quality that clients expect from us. In view of this, we are conscious that there is still a lot of work to do ahead of us, but we are committed to keep going this way.

Why did Bobo Choses choose Ocean Conservancy?

We chose Ocean Conservancy because we felt you are treating this issue with a lot of rigour. We got to know you through the communications from last year’s World Ocean’s Day and we felt that among many great organisations which are doing great projects, it was worth approaching you.

This is a topic that matters for us and we felt that by committing to an NGO specialised in this field we were actually contributing directly.

From our side, we think that the Worldwide Inventive Minds Against the Monsters of Pollution (W.I.M.A.M.P.) children’s community is a way to engage with kids in such debate, and receive their insights in a creative way.

Does Bobo Choses have a vision for the future in terms of the environment?

We strive for making our collections more sustainable and inspire our customers in such path. We want to communicate these values while recognising that there is still a long way to go. We feel the more the customers appreciate the proximity of our designs and production the better.

In this regard, we also feel that upcycling part of our value chain is a great way to go in order to reduce our footprint.

See the line and learn more about Bobo Choses here or check out the W.I.M.A.M.P campaign here.

Images © W.I.M.A.M.P.