A new action plan to make fashion more sustainable was launched by Defra at the start of London Fashion Week in February 2009. More than 300 organisations, from High Street retailers to textile manufacturers, signed up to the Sustainable Clothing Roadmap. So when Jun Wong co-founded Yew Clothing, a sportswear company that uses recycled or organic fabric, last September he was joining a growing movement.
"There wasn't much choice available in the UK when it came to [recycled] sport and outdoors clothing," he says. "I wanted to expand what people could get hold of here."

The business sources fabric from Taiwan—"they're one of the leaders in sports fabrics from a technical point of view and very good at recycling"—while the clothes are manufactured in Turkey. Wong admits that he's not been able to tick every "green" box; compromises have been made. "From an environmental perspective, moving the fabric from the Far East to Turkey and then to the UK doesn't make sense," he says. "In the future, we'd like to reduce the transportation element."

And while the sports tops are 100 per cent recycled polyester, items such as the thread, zips and labels are not sustainable. "We want to get a sustainable product to the market, in a way that we're willing to talk about—everything we did well, and everything we didn't do so well," he explains.

It's important, Wong adds, for businesses to be sustainable and profitable. "I firmly believe that what makes sustainable sense also makes business sense," he says.