Christmas is just around the corner but while it’s the most wonderful time of the year, it’s not the most environmentally-friendly. The festive season is traditionally the period of peak consumption when we go all out on gifts and food to impress our guests. So the madness begins: Shopping, shopping, shopping. Consumption is rising to a whole new level within this time. What people tend to forget is what negative impact it has on our environment. So why not make this year our most eco-friendly, sustainable Christmas yet.

How to celebrate more consciously?

Small changes already make a huge difference in reducing our environmental footprint during the festive break. With this in mind, here are 5 ways for a more sustainable Christmas season:

Gift smartly

Finding the perfect Christmas present is never easy: Something the person actually needs, really likes so that it’ll be used for a long period of time. Especially gifting clothes can be very difficult because taste differs and we can never be sure about the exact fit. So this year why not give something that your friend likes and that actually fits? One of our very personalised WONDA vouchers. We know that maybe vouchers can sometimes come across as not personal enough: Not with us! You can choose the individual voucher value and make the voucher card super personal with sending us a photo that we will integrate into the card. We also offer a free 15-minute, personal, zoom consultation session for your friend. In this way, we will make sure that she’ll find her perfect fit and a piece that she actually loves. A Christmas present that couldn’t be more thought-out and sustainable.

WONDA gift voucher [Digital]

Choose the value that you want to offer.

20,00€ – 100,00€ inc. VAT

Shop now

Rent a Christmas tree

Even though on average seven million real trees are being dumped in January, they are still far more sustainable than artificial alternatives. So how about the most sustainable option: Renting a real tree. After the festive season it gets picked up at your place and will be replanted. Win, win.

Choose the right wrapping paper

Time to get creative. Either re-use last years wrapping paper, or if you buy a new one, opt for recycled wrapping paper, brown paper or tissue. Maybe your pillowcase does its job here as well.

Send eco-friendly Christmas cards

Make sure to use certified or recycled cards. Also, recycle or compost the cards you receive in January or why not turn them into decorations for next year.

Reduce your (food) waste

Try to get creative with your leftovers. There are enough apps and blogs that help you create something amazing from your leftovers. There are also food waste apps that you can use. They connect you to people in need in your local area. You simply list what’s available, snap a photo and share your location with other app users. When going food shopping (and shopping in general) try to bring your own shopping bags, avoid plastic bags and plastic-wrapped products. Small steps already make a great impact if we all do them.

Happy holiday season!

The post It’s time to say ‘Merry Christmas’ appeared first on WONDA swim.

How to find the right gift?

And there is usually no better way to do so than with a great birthday present. However, when it comes to finding the perfect gift, I think we can all agree that at times it can be a bit of a struggle. To find that perfect birthday present. To find something your friends actually needs. Something she really likes. So that she’ll use it a lot and for a long time. Pretty much finding something that is really worth investing your money in.

The risks of gifting clothes (for our planet)

Especially when it comes to clothes, taste differs and we never know what exact size will eventually fit. And even if you go all in and purchase a piece for your friend, it is often the case that they are too shy to tell you they might not like it or that it doesn’t fit. And we definitely don’t want this to happen, the piece will end up in your friends closet and will never be worn. Not nice for you, your friend nor our beloved environment. Over 40% of people own clothes that are not worn because they’ve gotten it as a gift and they either don’t really like it or it doesn’t fit. This is definitely something that should be avoided.

A gift that fits and lasts: Our WONDA voucher

So why not give something that your friend actually likes and that really fits? Because she can choose it herself. Why not give something that lasts? Because it gives her access to high quality timeless designs that she can use for several seasons and years. One of our WONDA vouchers. We know that maybe vouchers can sometimes come across as not personal enough: Not with us! You can choose the individual voucher value and make the voucher card super personal with sending us a photo that we will integrate into the card. We will also offer a free 15-minute, personal, zoom consultation session for your friend. This way we make sure that she’ll find her perfect fit and a piece that she will love for ages. A birthday present that couldn’t be more thought-out and sustainable.

WONDA birthday voucher [Digital]

Choose the value that you want to offer.

Happy celebrations!

20,00€ – 100,00€ inc. VAT

Shop now

Eco-friendly surprise party alternatives

And if your friend is still unsure what to do for her birthday, here are 3 ideas for some fun activities that at the same time do good for our beloved environment:

Clothes swap. We all have clothes that have been sitting in our closet for a while now because we don’t like to wear them anymore. This doesn’t mean that your friends don’t. Invite your girlfriends over and ask each to bring 10 items from their closet. Happy swapping!

Host a (dinner) party. For this, you only need to adjust your mindset for a couple of things in order to least impact our environment. Use only reusable and no disposable decoration, cups, cutlery etc. Ditch Balloons. Serve healthier treats. Maybe even opt for a specific theme where you ask each one to read himself into a little so that you can have some interesting, rich conversations around it.

Clean Up. If the weather plays along why not spend your birthday outside for a nice walk at one of your favourite spots? It doesn’t matter whether its the beach, forest or just somewhere in the city center – anywhere you like. Combine it with a super fun clean up. Just bring a bag and a glove for each of your friends and you can all together pick up a piece of trash here and there on your walk. An easy, active and cheap activity. So much fun, believe us!

The post It’s time to say ‘happy birthday’ appeared first on WONDA swim.

The true cost of Christmas consumption

The holiday season drives consumption to a ridiculous whole new level where people often end up buying things the recipients might not even like or use. Everything – even the smallest things – get wrapped up in wrapping paper creating huge amounts of unnecessary waste.

Companies and brands use this time of the year and the consumer behaviour to maximize their profits by offering discounts, selling their products for the cheapest prices. With actions like this people forget what the true cost behind these products is. They simply get dragged into this mass consumption. The overload of bullshitting marketing and promotional campaigns simply manipulates people’s minds and lets them forget what negative causes actually come along with the Christmas season.

No hunt for discounts with WONDA. Sorry, not sorry!

At WONDA we support a conscious Christmas, we don’t want to support this ridiculous mass consumption of products which the recipients might not even love and we don’t do discounts just to drive our sales. This is why we have thought about a very special Christmas Campaign for you guys.

We have an alternative with purpose for you instead

We have designed some super cool and sparkly Christmas Gift Boxes. With our gift boxes nothing can go wrong, as every single one of them has the purpose of finding the perfect fit and makes your beloved ones feel just as beautiful as they are to us!

With our gift boxes, you are paying the price we need to set in order to make up for fair production, using sustainable materials & sustainable packaging and ethical working conditions. However, since its Christmas, we do want to give something to our amazing customers and supporters. That’s why we tuned our gift boxes with:

• A 15-minutes fit consultation session with our fit experts so that we can make sure that the recipient will find the bikini set that fits her individual body best;
• A super cool eco-glitter bottle from The Sparkle Effect that can also be worn as a necklace and brings sparkly holiday celebrations;
• A customizable triangle gift box with a bunch of WONDAful compliments.

So if you are still looking for the perfect Christmas present: With our gift boxes, we will make sure that your beloved ones will not only love their present but also that it will fit and can be worn and used for a very long time.

Have a WONDAful sparkly Christmas and happy conscious holidays!

The post Conscious Christmas at WONDA appeared first on WONDA swim.

Today we are very proud to say that we have partnered with the Lisbon Surfrider Foundation and decided to donate 1€ of every order through our online shop to them.

What does the Lisbon Surfrider Foundation do?

Lisbon Surfrider Foundation is a non-profit organization whose purpose is to protect and showcase the importance of lakes, rivers, the ocean, waves, and coastlines along Portugal. It was important for us to choose a local partner which is equally connected to our beloved oceans as us and shares the same mission of fighting plastic pollution in our oceans.

Kick-off beach cleanup in Lisbon

In order to launch our partnership, we have done a beach clean up together. 30 motivated volunteers showed up Saturday morning and helped us to keep the beautiful beaches around Lisbon clean. The amount of microplastic we found on the beaches was shocking! Together with the Surfrider Foundation, we are planning on continuously doing these events in order to increase our local impact, raise awareness and help fight the challenges our environment is currently facing.

If you want to support us in organizing such events or have other ideas to rescue our oceans that you would like to realize with us and/ or Surfrider, please don’t hesitate to contact us!!

The post Surfrider x WONDA appeared first on WONDA swim.

On World Clean Up Day we joined the amazing girls from Zero Waste Lab and went to Praia da Fonte da Telha for a beach clean-up. As parts of the #breakfreefromplastic movement, we decided to do a Brand Audit in order to help identify the corporations most responsible for plastic pollution.

What are we doing a brand audit for?

What exactly is this movement and a brand audit? Well, even though groundbreaking work and initiatives with the focus on reducing plastic pollution have been growing, corporations like McDonald’s, Nestle, Coca-Cola and Starbucks have continued to pump huge amounts of plastic waste into our worlds. The aim of the brand audit is to identify the worlds top corporate plastic polluters and make them accountable for the branded plastic pollution they have been causing. So how does it work? The idea is that after each cleanup, the trash is being sorted and accounted for every brand, category and type of material that has been picked. Break Free From Plastic provides all necessary information, steps and a tool kit you can download if you want to participate and join the movement.

Our observations from the Brand Audit: Sagres and SuperBock plastic cups were all over the place

When we arrived at the beach, driving down the parking lot it was already absolutely shocking. We drove past and witnessed huge amounts of trash lying around everywhere: bottles, cups, straws, packaging. Everywhere. We didn’t even know where to start and within 1 hour we already had over 70 kg of waste collected. It was so sad to see how people treat our beloved environment. When we finished picking up trash, we sat together and started to sort the waste. And it was unbelievable. We accounted for every brand, category and type of material. And carefully wrote everything down according to the Brand Audit guidelines. The top polluters we could identify after our clean-up were Sagres and Super Bock plastic cups, Mc Donald’s plastic waste and Coca Cola cans. Another outstanding amount of trash was cigarette waste: Packages, but also cigarette butts. It felt really good to actually see where most of the trash is coming from in order to start to understand where this whole problem of plastic pollution has its origin. Plastic polluters must be accounted for, especially since they are huge brands like Coca Cola and Nestle as they are such powerful and impactful brands. They need to change and be a better role model for our society.

Results from the global Brand Audit report: Coca, Cola, Nestle, Pepsi, Unilever, Mondelez take your responsibility!

On October 23rd, #breakfreefrompastic launched their Brand Audit 2019 report in order to reveal which brands are the largest global sources of plastic pollution. They used data from the MASSIVE worldwide brand audits across 6 continents, 51 countries, 484 brand audits, with 71,541 volunteers collecting 476,423 pieces of plastic. With twice as many brand audits and more than double of plastic collected and audited in 2019 compared to the previous year, we got the same results: Coca Cola, Nestle, Pepsi, Unilever and Mondelez are the Top Global Polluters for the second year in the row. Read the full report.

Want to become part of this amazing huge, worldwide movement and stand up together with us in fighting plastic pollution? Join the #breakfreefromplastic movement!

The post Our recap from World Clean Up Day 2019 appeared first on WONDA swim.