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Search results for FASHION

Products of Change Meetings: Fashion July 2021

Elizabeth Ramsden from WRAP joins Kate French in the July POC fashion group meeting to talk about WRAP and the journey to their new Textiles 2030 initiative, which many retailers have signed up to.

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Products of Change Meetings: Fashion April 2021

Join Kate French Senior POC’s ambassador for fashion along with the fashion group and guest speaker to discuss the future of fashion within the sector.

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The Future of Transformational Leadership

Sara is founder of impact platform sarasimmonds.com transforming individuals’ brands and businesses around the globe to supercharge their impact. I talk to Sara about how we as an industry can transform our product offering.

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The Future of Sustainable Manufacturing

…With Adriana Batty from Lyfcycle

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The Future of Sustainable and Ethical Fashion

I speak to Dea Baker founder of Aqua and Rock the award winning sustainable and ethical UK fashion brand, about her journey in creating the brand and the future of sustainable materials.

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Products of Change Meetings: Fashion January 2021

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INNOVATION WITHIN FASHION MANUFACTURING AND RETAIL

How a British upstart forged a sustainable fashion revolution integrating a ‘give back’ scheme into its online sustainable fashion business.

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Sustainability in Fashion and Retail

Jade Snart, Senior Sustainability Manager at George at Asda

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BEYOND LINEAR

Production is an interlinked and complicated system owned by multiple stakeholders, which means we have to think differently and work together to advance any change.  You have to be responsible for your full supply chain, from the raw materials you use and how they are grown. This prods a need to review fertilisers, water usage and labour standards you abide by (not just the market standards but your standards too).  What about the transportation, warehousing, handling, who is the end user, how do they use your product, what happens at the end of the product life?  You are responsible for the full system and not just the moment in time in which the product is under your stewardship.    LONG READ: Global outlook in sustainable production and consumption policies   

HOW TO CHANGE   To start the journey in to transforming production we need to consider many elements:
  1. What energy are you using to produce? Can you use green energy? Can you save energy by reviewing how you are producing?
  2. Can you reduce waste in the manufacturing process?  What do you do with that waste? Can it go back into production? Can you reduce what goes to landfill?
  3. If you use water in the process, can you reduce this? Can you filter the water you use and bring it back in to use rather than waste?
  4. What happens to your product after use? Can you collect it and bring it back into re-use within the manufacturing process saving money on virgin raw material?
  5. Can your factories, office building be more energy efficient? How are you approaching air-conditioning, lighting? – there are many new energy saving options with Government grants available towards the costs.
  6. Can you design the product to ‘design out waste’? Can you reduce the material input into your products for ease of recycling or dissembling for future production?
  7. Can you be more efficient with your product skew count to reduce the number of different options, gaining parity across size and shape of your products? This could save on material wastage and over production.
  8. How are you transporting your goods? Can you reduce your carbon footprint by looking at how you package your goods (the air in the box)? What protects the goods during transportation? Can the materials you use be more sustainable? For example, polystyrene is not commonly recycled -and there are good alternatives.
By firstly measuring the outputs of your business (Co2, emitted by factories, energy use, waste streams and labour conditions) you can then start to build the plan to reduce these. First up, you need a base for your sustainable journey. One company that can look at your full system and provide advice on how to bring your company from the traditional ‘take, make, waste’ model to a circular system is the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, specialising in the Circular Economy. Please click here to learn more about the Circular Economy (i7 sub index 1-2 why change). For sustainable consumption and production (SCP) to work, we need to look at the best way to minimising the negative environmental impacts and look at how we increase ways to promote a quality of life for all. The International Institute for Sustainable Development list three definitions of sustainable consumption and/or production. The underlying principles of SCP must be clear.   Key principles of SCP:
  1. Improving the quality of life without increasing environmental degradation and without compromising the resource needs of future generations.
  2. Decoupling economic growth from environmental degradation by:
    • Reducing material/energy intensity of current economic activities and reducing emissions and waste from extraction, production, consumption and disposal.
    • Promoting a shift of consumption patterns towards groups of goods and services with lower energy and material intensity without compromising quality of life.
  1. Applying lifecycle thinking which considers the impacts from all lifecycle stages of the production and consumption process.
  2. Guarding against the re-bound effect, where efficiency gains are cancelled out by resulting increases in consumption (UNEP 2011).
LONG READ: Sustainable Consumption and Production - a handbook for policymakers    

NEW WAYS OF THINKING

Reversing the trends Globally we have lost half of our topsoil over the last 150 years through degradation, with predictions stating that there is 60 years of topsoil left if we continue our current practices. Regenerative agriculture looks at the practices that we need to adopt to allow grazing of livestock and growing of crops to put back in to the soil what they take out, this is achieved through many different practices all resulting in better soil health, storage of water and pulling carbon from the atmosphere, this way of farming is also non-polluting.

Patagonia baseball cap Patagonia the outdoor clothing company has been creating sustainable clothing for many years, as agriculture directly effects the fashion industry they have now diverted a huge amount of funds to invest in regenerative agriculture.