MUD Jeans

Lease A Jeans, launched in 2013, lets you pay a monthly fee over a one-year period instead of buying outright, with free repair services included. It suits people who like the idea of using rather than owning, and who want their old denim looped back into recycling. After the year you can keep the pair, swap it for a new one, or return it, so the appeal really depends on whether that circular model fits how you shop.

MUD Jeans is a Dutch denim brand specialising in sustainable denim, and it backs that up with concrete process work rather than just claims. It is a certified B-Corporation built around circular-economy principles, and was recognised as Best for the World in the environment category of the B Lab assessment, putting its environment score in the global top 5 percent of certified B Corps. The jeans are built to be repaired, leased, and ultimately recycled.

Its defining move is circularity baked into ownership. MUD Jeans uses up to 40 percent post-consumer recycled content sourced from discarded denim, including old jeans that customers send back for free, and it pairs that with its lease model so garments return to the loop. It also runs an annual life-cycle assessment on each product and publishes the water and CO2 impact on its website, which is unusually transparent.

Returned jeans get a quality check first. If they are in good shape they can be reused through the brand's vintage program; if not, they are sent to the recycling factory Recover in Valencia, Spain, where the denim fibres are pulled apart and reused in new jeans. You don't even need to have leased them, since anyone can return denim to MUD Jeans for recycling.

In the eleventh month of the one-year contract you get three options. You can switch to a fresh pair and keep leasing the new one at a 10 percent monthly discount, return the jeans without taking a new pair, or simply keep them, since after twelve monthly payments you have paid the jeans off and now own them. In the first two cases the old pair is recycled or sold as vintage depending on its condition.

The core idea is recycled denim. MUD Jeans uses up to 40 percent post-consumer recycled content, with the material coming from discarded denim sent in by customers, blended with other fibres to keep the jeans durable. The brand's Road to 100 project, begun in 2019, pushed this further by combining mechanical and chemical recycling to reach a pair made from 100 percent post-consumer recycled cotton in early 2022.

Through specific production methods rather than generalities. Its manufacturing partner recycles 95 percent of the water used in production via reverse osmosis, and its fabric partner uses a dry indigo method that replaces traditional multi-bath dyeing with a high-pressure dyeing foam. MUD Jeans then measures the result with an annual life-cycle assessment on each product.

Bert van Son re-launched the company after acquiring the brand in 2012. He brought a new vision and decided to invest in MUD Jeans, and the following year, in 2013, the Lease A Jeans concept was launched. The company is based in the Netherlands and has been headquartered in Laren, at the Groene Afslag, since September 2018.

In 2022 MUD Jeans partnered with the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam on a capsule collection inspired by the artist. The pieces carry lasered details such as Van Gogh's handwriting and lines from his letters, plus embroidered back prints of works like Almond Blossom and Self-portrait with grey felt hat. Fittingly for the brand, the denim was made from 30 percent hemp, 20 percent post-consumer recycled denim, and 50 percent organic cotton.

Yes. In 2022 MUD Jeans received the Koning Willem I-prijs for sustainable entrepreneurship, awarded by Queen Maxima of the Netherlands on behalf of the Koning Willem I Stichting and De Nederlandsche Bank. It has also been named Best for the World in the environment category of the B Lab assessment, landing in the top 5 percent of certified B Corporations on environmental score.

They do. Free repair services are part of the Lease A Jeans concept introduced in 2013, which is in keeping with the brand's whole circular philosophy of keeping a garment in use for as long as possible before it is eventually recycled. Repairing rather than replacing is central to how MUD Jeans extends the life of each pair.