Here at Move Dance we’re committed to becoming a more sustainable dancewear brand, business and employer. Over the last few years we have taken our first big steps to improve our carbon footprint in areas such as packaging and products. Becoming more sustainable, carbon neutral and working towards Net Zero is a huge project, especially as we look for solutions that keep costs affordable for our customers. We are dedicating ourselves to the task in order to be a responsible business with sustainable products and services.
Our key focus points are on proper measurement of impact, legitimate reduction in impact and keeping our products accessible. This means it will take some time to find the best solutions and be able to apply them to products, but this should ensure the biggest impact when rolled out.
On this page you will find the steps we have taken so far and what we are working towards in the future.
Carbon Footprint:
We are in the process of auditing and measuring our carbon footprint. Although we are a small business, we do have a wide range of products and activities that are being assessed so that we can track our progress towards carbon neutrality, reducing our CO2 footprint and ultimately Net Zero. Check back here for updates on our project.
Production:
The factories we work with:
We’re really proud of our own brand Move Dance products that we design in-house for dancers. Our products are made to withstand long hours in the studio and are high quality and comfortable. To create these products we work with selected factories around the world to ensure fair working conditions and excellent quality, located in the UK, China, Turkey, Taiwan & India. Having worked with some of these suppliers from the beginning of Move Dance back in 2007, we have built a great relationship with each of them. These factories are responsible for creating your Move Dance favourites such as Brook leotard & Kimi ballet wrap!
The materials we use:
At Move Dance we want to create the highest quality dancewear that is comfortable for you to dance in, especially for a full day of dancing. To create these products we spend a long time choosing the right fabrics. Currently, our ranges use performance fabrics such as cotton, polyamide blends & technical Lycra due to their durability and ability to allow ease of movement. We’re proud to say that in 2022 we launched the first Move Dance Vegan Ballet Shoe and introduced the Move Dance Patti Top which is made of organic cotton.
We are constantly evolving and producing fab new ranges for you which means we are always looking for new materials, our focus for new ranges is finding good quality sustainable fabrics such as natural fibres like bamboo and organic cotton and also recycled fabrics and yarn for knitwear. Our priority is to be able to replace popular ranges with sustainable materials such as bamboo and recycled materials in order to get as big an impact as possible. This development is across thousands of products that we need to keep at an attainable price to make it an easy choice for customers and therefore a meaningful positive impact. Going forward we are working on making the majority of our ranges sustainable as soon as we can.
Our first sustainable & affordable ranges are nearly here, these will be the initial steps to transition the bulk of our products to sustainable textiles over the next few years!
Did you know some of your favourite Move Dance ranges are made in the UK? Some of our Alegra branded products and The Euphoria Collection are manufactured in a UK factory!
In the future: we expect to be able to replace much of the normal dancewear with sustainable textiles and keep them at an affordable price point.
Packaging:
After you’ve ordered your fab new dancewear you’ll receive your order in recycled packaging. Our eco-friendly mail bags are made from 97% recycled LDPE. When deciding on our packaging we undertook a lot of analysis to make sure we are using high-quality but also as environmentally friendly as possible materials. In our research we found that many of the previously “sustainable” choices that businesses frequently made (paper bags, plant based plastic, compostable materials) were actually detrimental to the sustainability cause and sometimes had a bigger CO2 impact. We settled on a recycled plastic bag (at 97% recycled content which is the highest it's possible to manufacture) and this provides the lowest carbon footprint compared to other packaging and diverts waste away from landfill. We have also removed all bubble wrap & most plastic tape to make sure 95% of plastic has been removed from ancillary dispatch packaging in our warehouse.
The smaller bags inside your package that your new dancewear comes in, is a zip lock recyclable plastic bag. To further help the environment in packaging we are investigating bags made from other recyclable materials and improving our tights packaging so they arrive in craft card and recyclable plastic packaging. Research shows if dancewear doesn’t come in a good bag, the CO2 impact from waste is worse due to damage of goods.
Using recycled materials may involve plastic but it diverts waste away from landfill and is frequently the lowest CO2 impact way to package goods, so has the biggest positive impact.
If you’re signed up as a dance teacher you may receive a yearly dancewear catalogue to have a look through our lovely ranges and help you order. We’re pleased to let you know that the catalogue is fully recyclable, as is the packaging it is delivered in. The Move Dance catalogue is sent to a targeted number of dance teachers to reduce wastage this means we are able to send out less than half the catalogues we have done in prior years.
In the future: we expect to be able to use recycled materials in almost all of our packaging, and create the lowest CO2 solution to protect the products in storage and transit.
Move Dance HQ:
In the Move Dance office, we encourage all of our lovely staff to work towards creating a more planet friendly environment. On site we have all forms of recycling available and we don’t use gas so we’re ready for a non fossil fuel energy supply. LED lights are used throughout and lights in our warehouse adjust to the light available so the lights are only ever used when needed (even when switched on all day) which saves us a substantial amount of energy. Here, we are also building a plan to work towards net zero.
The team at Move Dance are dedicated to transitioning the business to a sustainable model, it’s part of our core objectives!
In the future: we expect to have a carbon neutral head office & operational facility soon, and develop a Net Zero plan with the team.
Who we work with:
We love being able to give you products from other leading dancewear brands on our website so you can browse a range of amazing dancewear! We want to work with these leading dance brands to bring you more sustainable choices so as soon as this becomes available to us we will bring it to our customers. For example, in 2022 we launched Ballet Rosa Sensil Range featuring leotards made from more sustainable fabric. Further to this, we can’t wait to bring new brands to you over the next few years with sustainable dancewear.
Check back here for updates as we continue our journey!
The Move Dance Team x