We clean up after ourselves.

We strive to use recycled (and recyclable) mailers and boxes to ship out our packages! Not only are our mailers recycled, but they're also manufactured in the USA, which helps cut down on our carbon footprint.

We also repurpose packaging materials that we receive from our suppliers when we mail out our larger wholesale orders, such as recyclable filler paper, bubble wrap, and large boxes.

All of our logo stickers are made from recycled paper, as is our cheerful, yellow patterned tissue paper - so feel free to recycle or repurpose those when you receive your order!

We proudly create all of our fabric-based products from scratch, and we intentionally design them in a way that keeps fabric waste to a minimum. By reducing the amount of fabric waste that's generated during our cutting process, we're able to significantly cut back on the amount of total textile waste that we create as a company.

Additionally, we save all fabric scraps that are large enough to repurpose and we use these to develop other zero-waste products (like our organic cotton fabric round sets & our reusable fabric cocktail napkin sets).

We also regularly incorporate fabric scraps into our product designs. For example, the white corner hanging loops on our colorful linen/cotton tea towels, are made from the discarded selvedge edges of our custom printed fabrics.

We intentionally use minimal packaging to wrap and secure
our products - but don't worry, we made our minimal packaging cute!

For example, our handmade burp cloths are rolled up and secured with a thin recycled paper strip known in the packaging world as a "belly band".

Our handmade tea towels and baby blankets are both carefully folded, tied with baker's twine and finished with one of our sustainably sourced product packaging cards.

Our product hang tags are digitally printed onto sustainably sourced paper and attached using colorful baker's twine and a good-old-fashioned safety pin (instead of the plastic fasteners used by many other companies).

We believe packaging is important in the product world, but so is the impact that it can have on the environment!

We're 100% committed to designing and manufacturing ALL of our playful products right here in the United States of America.

Yes, you read that right - every single product we design & sell is joyfully made in the USA.

Why? Because keeping our production made in America not only helps improve the USA's economy (on both a larger-scale, as well as on a local community level), but it also reduces our company's carbon footprint from shipping. Packages that are shipped to us from our domestic manufacturers and suppliers have a much shorter distance to travel (compared to other companies who regularly receive boxes coming from far-away factories that are located overseas).

We especially LOVE working with local Wisconsin companies whenever we can to source and print our materials and we know that our customers value and appreciate our commitment to reducing our carbon emissions as well!

We're thrilled to be partnering with Shopify Planet to provide carbon-neutral shipping on ALL retail orders placed on the Sunny Day Designs website!

There is no extra cost to our customers for this - we have decided to provide it as a means of reducing our business' carbon footprint (and also because we think it's the right thing to do).

At Sunny Day Designs, we consciously choose to use ONLY natural fiber, plant-based fabrics (such as linen and cotton). Additionally, we insist on only using 100% organic cotton fabrics to create our fabric-based baby products.

Why are we so strict about this? Because natural fiber fabrics are SO much kinder
to the environment...and they're also much gentler on a baby's delicate skin!

Textiles that are made from natural, and organic substances can be recycled, composted & broken down in a more natural way than synthetic, man-made fibers such as polyester, rayon, nylon, etc.

An added bonus is that natural fiber fabrics often wear better and last longer compared to synthetic fabrics, which have a tendency to pill, shed, and snag over time.

Although synthetic fibers can be recycled, there is a limit to how many times this process can happen before the fibers become too weak to be reused - resulting in them inevitably being discarded into a landfill. Worse still, some companies burn synthetic fabrics in an effort to dispose of them, which releases harmful, toxic gases into the sky.

Plus, every time you wash a synthetic fabric in the washing machine it "sheds" little bits of microplastics into the water, which eventually travel their way down through the pipes in your home and out into various bodies of water in your local community & beyond. Unfortunately, these microplastics do not fully break down, resulting in widespread water pollution and creating hazards for fish, wildlife & even humans.

One of the best things about washing our linen and cotton fabric products is that you won't need to worry about harming your community's eco-system or waterways. Any fiber shedding that may occur from natural fiber fabrics breaks down fully without polluting the oceans, lakes, or streams.

Our colorful printed fabrics are exclusively designed by us in house and are custom-printed in the USA using a high-tech, digital fabric printing process.

Digital printing on fabric uses almost no water at all and also incorporates long-lasting, non toxic, soy-based inks.

Most consumers are unaware, but water pollution from fabric printing and dying is a BIG ugly secret of the textile and fashion industry.

Sunny Day Designs strives to eliminate that issue by digitally printing all of our fabrics so that you can feel extra good about your purchase.

Plus the non-toxic dyes that our fabric printer uses are kinder to the environment when compared with many other fabric printing methods, since they don't leach the harmful metals and toxic chemicals that are found in many other fabric dyes and inks.

Another bonus is that, when washed, digitally printed fabrics don't "bleed" ink onto other items in your laundry and they also don't release harmful dyes and metals into the ocean via your pipes.

Plus, digitally printed natural fiber fabrics are non-toxic and are great for babies and anyone else who has sensitive skin!

All of our greeting cards, art prints, and stationery products are printed onto either recycled and/or sustainably sourced paper. They can all be recycled after use and we print all of our paper products in the USA in order to reduce carbon emissions from shipping.

With the exception of our vinyl stickers (which have a vinyl coating to make them a durable, long-lasting product) all of our paper-based products are digitally printed using soy-based inks.

Even our wholesale product catalog is printed on recycled paper and the rest of our marketing materials (postcards, business cards, hang tags, logo stickers) are printed onto sustainably sourced and/or recycled paper stock as well. 

We believe in preserving trees for future generations to climb, for creatures to inhabit, and to improve the Earth's overall air quality!

It may seem counter-intuitive, but we don't manufacture our products in massive quantities.

Why not? Isn't that a bad idea from a business perspective? Well, that all depends on how you look at it.

Many small businesses have to manufacture HUGE quantities of every product they sell in order to get the pricing so low that they can compete with bigger box stores. That approach is not always a business owner's choice, since many factories have minimum quantities that are needed in order to place an order.

However, the downside of that inventory model is that, unless a product sells out right away (unusual) companies are left with large amounts of products that end up just sitting on a shelf - sometimes for years - before they are finally sold off (or disposed of).

Multiply that by hundreds or thousands of products and you have a HUGE amount of items that need to be stored somewhere, usually in a temperature controlled environment. This type of storage requires warehouse space, heating/air conditioning, electricity, etc.

Our production approach is different and, while it may not work for all companies, it works well for us.

While we do have printed fabrics and other materials in stock that we are eagerly waiting to be used, we purposefully keep only small quantities of fully-finished products in stock as inventory, and many of our sewn fabric items are actually cut and sewn on demand.

Yes...this does slow down our production a little bit, but it also allows us to make more flexible and eco-conscious decisions about our fabrics and other materials so that we can prevent overproduction and material waste.

Although the processing of orders is a bit slower, we believe that small batch production (as well as the slow fashion movement) is actually the best solution to creating a more sustainable, less wasteful, and much more ethical product-based economy.

As they say: "Good things come to those who wait!"