News & Events

Bangkok, 22 February 2019  Thai Wacoal Public Company Limited, a manufacturer of Wacoal women's lingerie products that truly understands Thai women incorporation with the Association for the Promotion of the Status of Women under the Royal Patronage of HRH Princess Soamsawali Vorrarachathinutdamas and the Department of Environmental Quality Promotion under the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment organizes a campaign called "Wacoal Bra Day" – precious bras, generate jobs, save environment. It is the project that Wacoal has continuously organized entering its 8^th year. This year comes with a slogan of "We want your old bras" to inspire people to be more environmentally conscious or eco-friendly. It is a project that accepts donation of any brand of bras and entered them into a proper disintegration process by incinerating them in a closed system in conjunction with cement production to reduce pollution, reduce the use of natural resources and reduce greenhouse gases emission as well as to minimize waste within the community which can affect the environment. Wacoal is also providing good quality new materials to women in emergency homes to give these women jobs and career in creating handmade products, which is another corporate social responsibility campaign of Wacoal for sustainable society.

“Wacoal Bra Day” operates under the concept of Zero Waste by minimizing the amount of waste disposal to zero or no residual waste. Environmental pollution is an urgent national policy under global warming situation that the world and Thailand is facing. The primary principles are to use materials that can be reused as much as possible, to minimize the amount of waste, to produce and use environmentally-friendly products, to create new products that incorporate recycled materials as well as encourage the use of these products, to develop the use of recycled waste and to help raise the economy and create new jobs for the community. Because nowadays there are many environmental issues, which continue to escalate more and more every day, with pollution being one of the biggest problems that everyone should be aware of. It is important to find sustainable and effective solutions to help reduce the amount of waste and/or recycle/reuse them for the most benefits. “Wacoal Bra Day” project is based on the 3R principle which are:

1. Reuse – accepting donation of bra’s making materials to the Association for the Promotion of the Status of Women to be used in art and crafts or handmade product to generate income and create employments for the women in the emergency homes.

2. Reduce – taking old and deteriorated bras into disintegration process by using them as fuel instead of coal in the cement production. The combustion process is a closed system operated at a temperature of 1,800 degrees Celsius where all the waste materials would be burned leaving no ashes or any residual. This would help reduce environmental pollution, reduce the use of natural resources and reduce greenhouse gases emission.

3. Recycle – melting metal parts from bra wires, hooks and rings and reuse them in the most efficient ways.

Boondee Amnuayskul, Executive Chairman and Managing Director of Thai Wacoal Public Company Limited said “From the vision in Corporate Social Responsibility of Wacoal, the environmental aspect is very important. Wacoal pays attention to every process from start to finish, focusing on maintaining the standard of products’ quality and being environmentally-friendly as well as developing new innovation which begins with the use of resources, procurement of raw materials, production, transportation and logistics, delivery of products, customer relations till the process of dealing with waste or deteriorated products. This leads us to “Wacoal Bra Day” project where donation of old or deteriorated bras are accepted and use as energy source to help reduce waste and environmental problem in the community. This is because it would take, on average, more than 100 years for nature to decompose one bra as most of the materials are polymers and would destroy the environment when dump in landfill. But if these bras were used as an alternative fuel, it would help reduce the use of gas, oil and coal and even help with global warming. In addition, “Wacoal Bra Day” project works in conjunction with the Association for the Promotion of the Status of Women under the Royal Patronage of HRH Princess Soamsawali Vorrarachathinutdamas to support women and children suffering from physical and mental crises in women’s emergency homes by generating jobs and incomes making it easier and happier for them to return to the society. This project is considered to be a Social Enterprise (creating job, creating income). Wacoal provides new and good quality materials like fabric, laces, foam, shoulder straps and elastics for these women to use in creating handmade products with help and support of skilled experts from Thai Wacoal Plc who will give them knowledge and ideas for their works to add values and develop the products further. Anyone can help support these women in emergency homes by buying their products and give them opportunity and moral support.”

Intira Narksakul, Marketing Director of Thai Wacoal Public Company Limited, said "As 12^th February 1913 is the birthday of the world's first bra and considered as "Bra Day". Thus, on the 12^th February of every year Thai Wacoal Public Company Limited, a leading manufacturer and distributor of lingerie products under Wacoal brand, organizes "Wacoal Bra Day"  precious bras, generate jobs, save environment. This year is the 8^th year of this project with a slogan “We want your old bras”. According to the Thai female population statistic, there were 28,182,451 women between the age of 10-69 years old in 2017*. Based on the survey, in one year, one woman would buy 5-12 bras and throw away 2 old bras. Each bra has an average weight of 100 grams which means in 1 year, there would be an increase of 5,636 tons of waste. Therefore, Wacoal would like to invite Thai women to show their love to the Earth and the environment by donating any brand of old/deteriorated bras to Wacoal. These bras become valuable when entered disintegration process by burning in a closed system without ash nor smoke and use as an alternative fuel for coal in cement production. This reduces environmental pollution, reduces the use of natural resources and reduces emission of greenhouse gases under the concept of Zero Waste (Waste = Zero). This is another project that helps stimulate and encourage women across the country to check the health of their bras to enhance their personality".

“Wacoal Bra Day” has received donations of more than 300,000 bras from the public since the project started in 2012 which is equivalent to 30 tons of waste. This helps with environmental protection equivalent to 1,800 trees or cut down on the use of 36 tons of coal and reduce greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to 17.88 tons of Carbon Dioxide. Wacoal, therefore, would like to invite every woman to participate in this campaign, offer opportunities to other women and generating values to the community and the country by donating unused old bras to "Wacoal Bra Day" project at any Wacoal shops and Wacoal counters throughout the country. For more information, please contact Call Center at 02-296-9979.

Thai Wacoal Public Company Limited was led by board of directors and volunteers passed our power and love in"Good Hat, Great Mind" event by created and decorated hats and sent to breast cancer patients under National Cancer Institute and Cancer Hospitals's supervision. This event was held at exhibition room 3rd floor, Thai Wacoal Public Co., Ltd.

Miss Karunee Surai , Director of Thai Wacoal Public Co., Ltd. said , With our vision, it was believed that women are beautiful from inside so we concern about woman's need in every ages. We are also concern with health and women's disease especially breast cancer. In the modern world, statistics of breast cancer patients increase more than 15,000 people per year that they have chemotherapy as part of their treatment which induces hair loss so, they need wigs and hats for their confident. Because of high cost, wigs is not enough for patients that is the reason why we held this activity.

Wacoal always response for society through various activities. Likewise, we would like to make more confident for breast cancer patients to live happily in society. In addition, to keep continue our concept about making career and income, we donated materials to Association for the Promotion of the Status of Women under the Royal Patronage of HRH Princess Soamsawali and hired women from occupation center to sew these hats. Finally, we would like to keep relationship between directors and employees through this activity by decorated 3,500 hats together and make sustainable development to our organization in the same time.

"For breast cancer patients, Wacoal would like to encourage them because it is what they need. For people who were diagnosed, don?t give up because you can recover as soon as you found it and treat in the right way. It is also important to focus on this disease and know how to take care of their breast in a correct way and go for annual health check as well especially for the risk ages to protect everyone from breast cancer" Miss Karunee said.