Products of Change hosted a meeting for its sports and sports-adjacent members last week (11 March) at POC partner, The Mills Fabrica, in London, focused on actualising materials of the future.

With a number of committed sports members in the POC network, Products of Change used the opportunity of The Mills Fabrica‘s Performance without Toxicity exhibition to bring them together with innovators from The Mills for a meeting, including Tottenham Hotspur, Premier League, Justgood, Disney, Worldly, Event Merchandising, Science Museum, Groundtruth, Informa, and more – each of whom provided such rich conversation and insights to make it a truly valuable day.

The Mills Fabrica works closely with POC, sharing with us its incredible innovator network – to inspire as well as connect brands and organisations to the solutions already at their fingertips for more sustainable product creation.

The meeting began with a private toy of the Performance without Toxicity exhibition, a display of innovations from within The Mills Fabrica community as well as implementations from brands that have adopted new materials and technologies in their products.

Amy Tsang, head of Europe, The Mills Fabrica, introduced the exhibition, explaining how performance wear is a challenging segment when it comes to sustainability, but this exhibition gives a glimpse into what’s possible. Poppy Lam, assistant manager of Fabrica X, The Mills Fabrica’s exhibition space, then took attendees through the exhibition. She explained that an explosion in the popularity of sportswear has highlighted the need for lower impact offerings. As it stands, the performance attributes of the products come at the expense of the planet – but they don’t have to. She added that the purpose of such exhibitions is for the Mills Fabrica to serve as a funnel of innovation for companies – highlighting progress over perfection.

After the exhibition, we reconvened upstairs for presentations from three of the exhibiting innovators. Amphico creates PFAS-free waterproof and breathable membranes as well as ‍waterless colour without toxic chemicals. Nanoloom creates fully circular graphene composites, which can slot into existing mill infrastructure, utilising the numerous attributes of graphene, such as strength, water repellence, as well as crucially biodegradable and chemically recyclable. Then Colorifix shared its innovation tackling the polluting nature of existing textile dyeing with its microbial dyes.

With the inspiring possibilities – and exciting realities – of the innovations fresh in mind, the meeting then moved onto a roundtable discussion, where attendees were encouraged to discuss how we can collectively push the sports industry towards the tipping point of system change? We discussed what innovation looks like and what is required to make it scale and the steps needed to scale.

What ensued was an honest and lively discussion about the challenges certain companies are facing but also a shared drive to overcome them. It was highlighted that there needs to be additional benefits of a sustainable change or product beside “it is the right thing to do” as consumers need to be sold performance when it comes to this space.

“The Products of Change roundtable took us outside of our typical remit and helped us understand that similar challenges are being felt in the branding and licensing world, with their own unique constraints, in line with the textile supply chain – further reinforcing our view that every organisation across the value chain needs to do their part for real change to happen. It was inspiring to hear that some of the most influential institutions in global sport, who were sitting in the room, understood their part to play in driving sustainability and the importance of collective change,” commented Amy Tsang, head of Europe and Filipe Videira, business development manager at The Mills Fabrica.

A key takeaway was that it was everyone’s role in the room to be a bridge; a bridge between innovation, sustainable knowledge and progress, and the companies themselves. It was exciting to see the ambition and the transparency there, and we look forward to the next POC sport meeting for a glimpse of the progress that has been enacted in the meantime.