Well, that jolt to the system was February passing us by. Hopefully you made the most of the extra day we all received this time around. Is it odd that we don’t celebrate a leap year more extravagantly? I may host a leap party in 2028 and demand all guests dress as frogs.
But it has made me think. What a strange anomaly a leap year actually is… or rather, what an odd thing it is we do to smoosh things around to make our own constructs of time fit into a system that clearly doesn’t want to adhere. More and more, I’m wondering if the Pagans had the right idea all along…
Maybe there’s something in that? I find it fascinating to stop and reflect on how often we break our own rules to fit in with the laws of nature. Then again, maybe that extra day this year has left me with too much time on my hands to start thinking such thoughts? Not that this hasn’t been another extremely busy week for Products of Change, of course.
Some academic inspiration
This week, we shot into London once again, this time to drop in and explore a brand-new exhibition that has set up shop in Shoreditch’s community arts centre, Rich Mix. Curated by a specialist team from the Royal College of Arts, acting under the name the Textiles Circularity Centre, this exhibition aims to bring the depth and breadth of research the team has been carrying out into regenerative fashion to the public eye for the first time.
It was so inspiring to see this in a public setting. Messages around repair and reuse, how to identify clothing that needed damage repair, how to prolong the life of your clothing, how to redesign fashion for longevity, the research going into bacterial cellulose (reducing the dependency on fossil-based materials and the extraction of or overproduction of natural resources), and an optimistic glimpse at a future in which ‘consumers’ become ‘custodians’ and clothing is repaired at community repair centres with textiles libraries…
Simply putting these ideas in front of the public in such a way is an inspiring step forward. And we urge any London locals among our audience to drop in and check it all out.
But there’s a theme beginning to emerge. Encouragingly, the solutions are beginning to make their way into the public space. Just this week, the BBC reported on the EU’s early adoption of the Digital Product Passport across select consumer (custodian) products. Products of Change regulars would have heard us harp on about these before – new ‘transparency tools’ that host all the information on how each single item came to be produced: where its materials are from, where it was manufactured, how many miles it travelled to get into the customer’s hands, and so on.
The idea? That by arming shoppers with all this information, they can make their own considered decision about which product to purchase based on their environmental impact.
Members of the Products of Change community have been across this or a while. But for anyone now feeling the itch to get clued up on the whole subject of Digital Product Passports, please do drop us a line and we can happily put you on the right pathway forward.
Making connections, sharing knowledge
Connecting and educating is what we do. And it’s what we love to do. Bringing this industry together to share and learn has forever been at the heart of the Products of Change mission, which is why we are very pleased to announce both our first Live Packaging Workshop of the year as well as our first in-person POC Member Meet-up of the year. The fact they both take place on the same day (Thursday, March 21st) is an added bonus.
Yes, after its triumphant debut in March 2023, the Live Packaging Workshop is making its return to the Informa Offices in London where it will be led by the wonderful Mike Swain (POC Ambassador for Packaging) and James George (POC’s Advisor and Ambassador for the Circular Economy) as they take deep dive into the world of packaging design and the legislation set to be nudging it forward in the very near future.
Tickets for this event are available to purchase from the Products of Change Events page here.
This will be followed by Products of Change’s first in-person networking event of the year; a free-to-attend Member Meet-up at the Informa Office in London, where guests joining us will be welcomed with refreshments and a complimentary 20-minute Sustainability 101 learning session.
Spaces are limited, so please – if you wish to come along and join us for a networking evening – register yourself here.
The Spring issue of the Products of Change Magazine
Finally, this week you may have seen that work is now underway on the next issue of the Products of Change magazine, our Spring 2024 Sustainability Edit. Among the usual fun we have of collating all your stories of sustainable development over the last few months (and please do get in touch with us today to see your news featured in the next issue) we are very excited to be working a special feature in time for Las Vegas Licensing Expo.
This issue, we are celebrating the Next Generation Leaders of Sustainability in Brands, Licensing, Products, and Retail. We want to shine a light on the amazing talent among all those Gen Z and Millennial members of this wonderfully vibrant and creative industry as they drive forward the sustainability agenda and turn into action all those wonderful conversations about taking this space into the future.
If there’s anyone on your team, in your network, or amongst your stakeholder ecosystem that you think deserves a massive shout out in the next issue of the magazine, we would love to hear from you.
It’s an honour to be able to talk about the work this amazing industry is putting into to changing for the better, and more so to be able to spotlight the leaders with whom we know the future of this business is in safe, creative, and innovative hands.
On that note, and with Mad March in full swing outside my window already – seriously, I’m still drenched from the school run while the sun beats down outside right now – we wish you all a pleasant weekend. Make sure you dress for the weather… and good luck with that.
