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Timberland’s ongoing environmental mission has reached a major milestone. This week, the footwear brand announced that it has planted its 2 millionth tree in the Horqin Desert in northern China as part of its efforts to stem deforestation in the region.The Stratham, N.H.-based company, a division of VF Corp., has a long track record of outreach in the area. In 2001, an employee suggested the brand take part in the reforestation of the Horqin Desert in inner Mongolia, which was the root cause of sandstorms in Japan.
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Striving toward sustainability is an ongoing trend in the fashion industry, as companies and consumers continue to find alternatives to cheap, disposable clothing and wasteful production practices.
The latest: American textile manufacturer Polartec this week celebrated recycling its billionth plastic bottle.
PRODUCT, SERVICE & DESIGN INNOVATION -
From startup designers to major retailers, the fashion world continues to battle our culture of fast fashion and wasteful wardrobes with innovative designs and recycling efforts.
PRODUCT, SERVICE & DESIGN INNOVATION -
Next month, H&M will introduce 16 new denim styles made using recycled cotton from textiles collected in the Garment Collecting initiative in H&M stores. The pieces for men, women and kids are the latest steps toward H&M’s goal of creating a closed loop for fashion, and will be available in all stores worldwide, as well as online.“Creating a closed loop for textiles, in which unwanted clothes can be recycled into new ones, will not only minimize textile waste, but also significantly reduce the need for virgin resources as well as other impacts fashion has on our planet,“ says CEO Karl-Johan Persson.
PRESS RELEASE -
The future of denim – where does it stand as a category? This question was addressed in the conversation panel – held in L.A. on August 19th – at the Avery Dennison RBIS Customer Design & Innovation Center. The panel hosted some of the fashion industry’s most denim-focused professionals to discuss, alongside the audience, how consumer trends are shifting, and some of the influencing factors that might be contributing to an underlying conversation on the category.
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Patagonia Provisions — a initiative from conscientious outdoor apparel brand Patagonia aimed at rethinking our food chain — has launched a groundbreaking partnership with family-owned meat company Wild Idea Buffalo to conserve and restore the grasslands of South Dakota, while producing a sustainably sourced Buffalo Jerky. This is the latest addition to the company’s food line designed to create positive change in the food industry.
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Not to be confused with the Fruit Rollups many of us probably grew up with here in the States — we’re talking about a solution to one of South Holland's (not to mention the rest of the Western world’s) biggest social issues (food waste), developed by a group of undergraduates from Willem de Kooning Academie in Rotterdam.
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Knowing how conventional cotton is grown and denim is made, always-a-better-way outdoor apparel brand Patagonia has set out to change the industry. The company has partnered with chemical company Archroma on a new denim collection, launched this week — which is Fair Trade certified and said to use 84 percent less water, 30 percent less energy and 25 percent less CO2 compared to conventional denim dyeing processes — as well as a campaign telling us all about it.
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A new report released today from Rainforest Action Network (RAN) documents decades of human rights abuses suffered by communities at the frontlines of plantation expansion for tree-based fabric production. Lessons from the Incense Forest implicates popular American brands, which RAN has dubbed the ‘Fashion Fifteen’, as being at risk for deforestation and human rights violations in their supply chains. Prominent brands include fashion giant Ralph Lauren, whose Annual General Meeting (AGM) is to take place in New York City this Thursday, August 6th.
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Just weeks after partnering with surfer Kelly Slater on his new men’s apparel line, Outerknown, upcyled fiber supplier Aquafil today announced it has partnered with Speedo USA on a take-back program that will allow Speedo’s post-manufacturing swimwear scraps to be upcycled into Aquafil’s 100 percent regenerated ECONYL® nylon.
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As only 15 percent of clothes, shoes and accessories are recycled each year — with the remaining 85 percent, 10.5 million tons, ending up in landfills — more and more apparel brands (including H&M, The North Face, American Eagle Outfitters, and most recently, Levi-Strauss) are taking initiative to collect and recycle textiles
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If you’re a small-scale designer or apparel brand, managing your supply chain efficiently and sustainably can be a challenge. MadeRight, a startup that recently launched out of Y Combinator, wants to change that.MadeRight is helping designers simplify the textile manufacturing process through its consortium of ethical, global factories and its procedures to streamline product movement.
LEADERSHIP -
Forest conservation firm Wildlife Works' factory in Kenya has become the first in Africa to be both carbon neutral and certified by Fair Trade USA.On the heels of this announcement, Wildlife Works is launching its first-ever carbon-neutral, Fair Trade-certified t-shirts, designed by fashion brand Threads 4 Thought (T4T). The clothing company will be contributing over $6,000 in Fair Trade premiums directly to Wildlife Works factory workers.
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With ever-changing fashion trends, cheap and disposable clothing creates heaping piles of landfill trash around the world. Two recent developments in the fashion industry — an art exhibit and a recycled clothing line — aim to spread awareness of and combat this mounting problem.
Waste on Display
First, a new art installation in Hong Kong by eco-friendly fashion NGO Redress illustrates the enormity of clothing waste and the associated environmental impacts. Made from 360 kg of discarded clothing, the YWASTE? exhibit represents the amount of textiles dumped into Hong Kong landfills every two minutes — 10,800 kg, or nearly 800 lbs an hour!
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This week at the United Nations headquarters, adidas celebrated its new partnership with Parley for the Oceans by showcasing the first innovative footwear concept born from the collaboration.Parley for the Oceans brings together creators, thinkers and leaders to raise awareness about the disastrous state of the oceans and to collaborate on promising projects that can protect and conserve them. As a founding member, adidas supports Parley for the Oceans in its education and communication efforts and its Ocean Plastic Program that aims to end the rampant plastic pollution of the oceans.
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Last month I did a feature interview with Davis Smith, CEO of outdoor gear and apparel company Cotopaxi, and was impressed with the way the brand had managed to build sustainability and social responsibility into its business model.
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The far-reaching social impacts of the fashion industry were catapulted into the global spotlight with the devastating collapse of the Rana Plaza garment factory in Bangladesh in 2013.
BEHAVIOR CHANGE -
Last week, a colorful protest temporarily diverted attention from the red carpet parade at the 2015 Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) Fashion Awards at New York City’s Lincoln Center.Dressed in sleek formal wear, activists deployed a large banner over the heads of the crowd while others handed out balloons and business cards printed with a parody logo of the demonstration’s target: Ralph Lauren.
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Fashion is probably the last thing you think about when you see a leather airplane seat – yet through a partnership between Southwest Airlines and textile and accessories upcycler Looptworks, 43 acres of leather collected from 80,000 discarded Southwest airplane seats were turned into LUV Seat weekender duffle bags, shoes, soccer balls and more that embody how creative partnerships can help companies close loops and benefit the environment.
COLLABORATION -
Fresh from its successful collaboration with Southwest Airlines on its LUV Seat collection of bags and accessories upcycled from the airline’s leather seats, Looptworks has launched an email campaign to enlist its customers’ help in restoring the Colorado River.