Environmental and Social Practices

You can always feel safe when wearing any KT-piece. Here is more info on how we ensure it.

Our team

As a fearless mogul skier with three Olympic medals to her name, our founder Kari Traa, has made way for women to push their limits and follow their dreams.

Since the very beginning in the early 2000s, her free spirit and bold personality was manifested in her collections of playful and feminine sportswear. Because Traa believe women know themselves best, a new way of making and communicating sportswear began, for girls by girls.

In a male dominated sports business, this fresh way of thinking and creating, for women only, made waves through Norway where the adventure began.

Today, we have an all-women team to put forward this legacy. Women who truly care about creating comfortable and great looking athletic wear, tailor made for women’s needs.

From design, production to communication, you find bold women passionate about pushing for progress. We are tired of how women are stereotyped in commercials and try to show all the strength, weakness, rawness and diversity that make us. Being surrounded by a constant pressure to be perfect, we try to ease it by being a positive cheer group for women, inspiring women to be happier, healthier and stronger. Whether you´re a pro, pretender or a newbie in sports - you are welcome in our girl’s club only, just as you are.

Factory Life

Making a secure and just work environment for our co-workers at the factories, is super important to us. To secure this, we follow the UN´s Universal Declaration of Human Rights and The International Labour Organization «ILO»´Click here to access the UN´s Universal Declaration of Human Rights and The International Labour Organization regulations that involve: Equal pay between men and women, no child labour and no exceeding of normal work hours. All of our workers are entitled to overtime provisions, and to get breaks during their work days. Which yes, should be a given, but sadly not in this world.

We follow up on this by doing unannounced visits ourselves. But we also get help from our experienced friends in the non-profit organizations BSCI and IEH

IEH – Ethical Trading Initiative Norway
gives us advice on which countries that are safe to produce in, what to look for when doing inspections and how to create efficient long-term goals. IEH has also helped us develop our code of conduct to meet the UN, ILO and our own regulations.

BSCI – Business Social Compliance Initiative
are helping us on inspecting factories, rating them from A to F. If one receives A or B, the factory is approved and will only be inspected every third year. Should the factory receive C, D or E however, inspections will be carried out every year to make sure they improve.

Shanghai Office

To be closer to our production, which mainly takes place in Vietnam, China and Myanmar, we have an office of 50 people working in Shanghai. They perform our inspections, secure the product quality and create important long-term relations with the factories.

Packaging

We wish there was a better solution to this, but packaging is never really eco-friendly (yet!), so we had to go with the lesser of two evils principle. When considered over the lifetime of the packaging, paper and cardboard embody far more greenhouse gases than their plastic equivalents, so yes, we use plastic. 1/3 of it is however made from recycled material, and we are currently working on increasing the amount. The goal is to have a new eco-friendly packaging in 2020. Meanwhile we urge you to recycle it. On our side, we try to make up for creating all this waste, by paying qualified national recycling firms to take care of it in a sustainable way through The Green Dot System.

Fabrics

We produce a lot of our stuff from wool, which obviously is super eco-friendly. When other materials are needed however, we do our best to secure that our products are 100 % free from bad chemicals.

To sum up, you can always feel safe when wearing any KT-piece. Here is more info on how we ensure it:

REACH
We comply with the European Union´s REACH regulations, that prohibit harmful chemicals. All of our materials are registered and evaluated to be on the safe side.

Random testing
All of our suppliers are committed to supply chemical-free products. Every 24th month we carry out random testing of every product category to control them.

Antifungal and antibacterial treatment
We have phased out the use of antibacterial treatments of any kind. Why? Because the chemicals used to do so never decompose when they end up in sea, causing mass deaths of micro-organisms. Instead, we focus on new technology and design that makes the garments more breathable and dry.

Bluesign® System
Our main suppliers of fabrics are Bluesign certified. Which means, they only use safe input chemicals, monitor their air and water emissions and ensure worker safety so that the dyed fabric is safe for the end user, workers and the environment.

Recycled Polyester
A lot of training gear is made from polyester, which basically is plastic. We are currently working on replacing ours with a recycled one however. There is far too much plastic in the world already, so we´re really excited about this and will keep you posted!

Products free from Fluorinated chemicals

Kari traa is phasing out all per-fluorinated chemical treatments of its products (both short-chain and long-chain). We use RUDOLF BIONIC-FINISH®ECO Technology which is 100% fluor free. RUDOLF BIONIC-FINISH®ECO is on Green Peace’s List of accepted Fluor Free compounds.

The ecological water-repellent impregnation is based on a fluorine-free recipe with many benefits:

• the water-repellent component used is based on a fluorine-free recipe
• water-repellent
• soil-repellent
• keeps colours and fabrics looking new longer
• allows textiles to dry more rapidly
• makes textile care a child's play
• breathable
• resistant to washing
• weatherproof

Non Mulesing Wool

To get that soft and silky feel to our wool products, we use wool from the finest merino sheep’s in New Zealand and Australia. With a founder who grew up on a sheep farm, we truly care for these animals. It´s super important for us to know that the sheeps have been taken good care of, and that they haven’t been mistreated by the horrifying mulesing technique. To ensure this, we get our wool from the strictest controlled channels that have been created internationally. The certificates that follow, are the best assurances we currently have to make sure that our wool products are manufactured under good welfare conditions for the animals.

IWTO certificate:
Secure that all partial shipments of wool, come from non-mulesing wool.

Certificate of Origin:
Guarantees that all shipments of wool come from the certified non-mulesing wool suppliers in the actual production country, to the supplier in China.

Wool Spinning Certificate:
Confirms that all garments produced by Kari Traa production partners, are based on non-mulesing wool.

Kari Traa has taken an active stand against mulesing and expect that this practice in raw material production soon will be history.

Responsible Down in our jackets

Kari Traa uses only certified down from the food industry. The certification means that the down is not from live animals and the 5 Freedoms of the animals are respected.

• Freedom from Hunger and Thirst
• Freedom from Discomfort
• Freedom from Pain, Injury or Disease
• Freedom to Express Normal Behavior
• Freedom from Fear and Distress

Fur free

Each year, millions of animals are suffering for fashion. Which to us is bizarre, knowing we have such great faux alternatives to choose from. Therefore, all «fur» you see on our jackets is fab faux versions that do the job just as well.