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Pumpuli Hand Made Organic Baby Cotton Knitwear
AVAILABLE FOR DELIVERY MID NOVEMBER
THE PUMPULI STORY
Pumpuli products combine beautiful and high-quality garments, produced so as to put the least possible strain on the environment - with the hope of leaving our beautiful planet that much cleaner and better for the children.
All our knitwear is hand-knitted with individual attention and care (not mass-produced in some horrid sweatshop) of sustainably-grown organic cotton, which is dyed using only natural colours - wonderful things like rose petals! - or in many cases left completely undyed to show the beautiful natural colour of pure cotton. And as the cotton is grown and processed in the area where the garments are made, we minimise unnecessary transportation. We also care about the packaging, using recycled, unbleached and otherwise sustainable materials wherever possible.
All our knitwear is produced in rural Zimbabwe, where some of the best cotton in the world is grown. Like in many other parts of the world, the women in Zimbabwe often carry the responsibility for ensuring that there is food on the table and the kids have clothes. The trouble is, the economy being all but collapsed and most women out of work, many are finding it very difficult to scrape together even the bare essentials. To do our bit to help, our suppliers only employ local women to do all the knitting, dyeing, spinning, etc.; this way the women have a secure livelihood in a region where living wages are far from a 'given', and the much-needed money goes directly where it benefits the household most.
Finally, a brief note on the word 'organic'. The cotton in our garments is all grown according to organic standards, in other words avoiding the use of artificial fertilisers, pesticides and insecticides, and generally caring for the land and the plants as nature intended. Regrettably, few certifying bodies are willing to send their inspectors to Zimbabwe under the present circumstances. That is why we cannot 'officially' declare our cotton organic. However, we believe that it is the practice of organic farming which matters to the environment (and hopefully also to you, our customers), not the piece of paper certifying this, and we are proud to be ardently organic in spirit even if we don't have a certificate to prove this.
So you can buy our products knowing that they are as good for the planet as they are for your baby!
Oh, and they of course look and feel just wonderful!!
And the name Pumpuli? Well, curiously enough, Pumpuli is an old Finnish word for cotton. (Not that there's much cotton being grown in Finland, but we just liked the word!) Guess it also goes to show what a small world it is, after all - and all the more worth protecting for it.
The correct pronunciation, incidentally, is such that both the 'u's sound similar to the vowel in 'foot', and the 'i' at the end is as in the word 'hit'.
PRODUCT NAMES
All our products are named after endangered species whose existence is under serious threat according to IUCN / World Conservation Union, the leading authority on this matter.
Sadly, we have plenty to choose our names from: the IUCN Red List contains over 2,300 endangered species - and that's just the ones threatened by conventional agriculture!
So we felt that while our organic cotton farming is already helping harmonious co-existence between us and all the other species that live on this planet, we could help further by also highlighting the dire straits of some of these creatures by borrowing their names.
