About Bravado! Designs

Since our beginnings in 1992, Bravado! Designs has operated in a green, sustainable fashion. It’s as much a part of who we are, as is making fabulous nursing bras to enhance a mom’s self esteem during the triumphant, yet challenging time of pregnancy and breastfeeding.

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With about 40 people in our office, we still only have 2 bags of garbage a week! (Which is less than most family households!) How do we do it? Here are just some of the ways... 

We don’t have city-offered composting available in our area, so we do it ourselves! We have a compost on site, where we put our fruit and veggie waste; that we later use to fertilize our flowers and shrubs. 

We reuse or recycle everything! For example: 
     - We reuse the backs of paper for internal use, like for order forms and such. 
     - We reuse leftover terrycloth fabric from our breast pads to make hand towels for our kitchen and bathroom. 
     - We recycle all cans, bottles and paper for city pick up. 
     - For any paper the city wouldn’t otherwise pick up for recycling, we pay for a private company to pick up and recycle. 

We say ‘no’ to disposables. We have lots of dishes, cutlery and glasses in our kitchen (we get hungry making bras!) so there’s no need for plastic. When we 
order out for lunches, we ask that plastic items not be sent with the meal. 

Any leftover, defective or surplus fabrics and packaging, we donate to various organizations, including: 
              - Bolts of fabric to community sewing programs, which support new immigrants and others to learn new skills. 
              - Packages, old cardboard, posters (laminated makes for great finger painting!), fabric scraps and other odds and ends to community schools for arts and crafts. You should see the brilliant creations kids come up with by using our ‘garbage’! 
              - Fabric strips and plastic from packaging to our local community gardens (they use them as tomato ties!). 

We do organic. For starters, all of our coffee and tea in the building (and that’s a lot…) is organic, and fair trade where possible. 

We also do not use any pesticides on our lawn, and we let nature do the watering. 

We conserve energy. We have programmable thermostats that are adjusted so heat and air conditioning is not blasting on weekends or when we’re closed. 

And speaking of energy, we just went ‘Bullfrog’! For those outside of Ontario, Canada; Bullfrog is a new energy retailer that provides clean, reliable electricity from 100% EcoLogo certified energy sources. By doing this, Bravado is supporting renewable electricity rather than coal and nuclear, and helping to take action towards improving our air quality and protecting our environment. (For more information, check out www.bullfrogpower.com.)

We use energy efficient light bulbs. 

We make many donations of product seconds (product that is perfectly fine to the naked eye, but for one reason or 
another does not meet our strict quality standards for sale) to women's shelters, pregnancy crisis centers and similar agencies. For example, this past December, we donated nearly 2,000 nursing bras and underwear. Why let them end up in a landfill, when they can go to help and encourage new moms? 

And we’re constantly looking for new ways to improve our efforts every day!