Last week, we were lucky enough to shoot the beautiful Robyn Lawley in our bra and undies. Robyn is passionate about the climate crisis and always ready to take a public stand on sustainability. I am eternally grateful to women like Robyn and Laura Wells who use their high public profiles as a platform for good, as well as photographers like Carlotta Moye and Elise Lockwood who give time to the cause by creating beautiful images that have important messages.

This week I was astounded and amazed and delighted to get the results of our great worm-farm experiment with WormTech who kindly buried the bra in March. Poor Shane has had surgery during that time but has still managed to get out there and dig up the bra from time to time. During his last recovery period, longer than the others, the worms really went for it, devouring all but the elastic in 8 weeks. Elastic is a little chewy for worms, (do they even have teeth?!) and so it is now in commercial composting to check its final breakdown. See below for the trajectory.

 

And so you can get a better look at that out of the soil

To be honest, my biggest fear has been that somewhere along the line, someone in some faraway place substituted one of my carefully selected components for something synthetic - they ran out of C2C thread and so finished sewing with polyester! Worms HATE synthetics (wise fellows) and have been known to eat all the cotton sewing thread from a T-shirt and leave the material because it was a blend. Ive been dreaming a lot about the story of the Princess and the Pea if any of you remember that? Only worms can spot the real McCoy and I am delighted that my worst fears have not been realised.

I am beyond excited to get these results which mean that having met with council to discuss, it's likely we can recommend you place your Very Good Bra in the garden organics bin at end of life! As many of us live in densely populated urban areas and don't have gardens or compost, this is exciting news. We also have a bra buried in soil at the University of New England to see how that breaks down. Worms are ten times faster, but again, this should prove that the bra can also be buried on your own garden if you prefer. More on that in a few months.