MARKETING AND COMMS -
In the true spirit of coopetition, 17 of New York’s top marketing, advertising and communications agencies have partnered with leading climate scientists and non-profits to harness consumer insights and creativity to motivate urgent and collective action to address climate change, starting with Gen Z — an estimated 17 million soon-to-be-voters citing a deep passion for climate change and other societal issues.
WASTE NOT -
It’s time to face the facts. By 2030, we will consume 102 million tons of apparel per year, an increase of 63 percent from 2017. And by 2050, the global-fashion industry will consume a quarter of the world’s annual carbon budget — which represents the quantity of greenhouse gas emissions that can be emitted to keep climate change “tolerable.”
SUPPLY CHAIN -
When Otero Menswear first decided to create an innovative, fashion-forward line of menswear, promoting both style and confidence, we were also committed to manufacturing every article of clothing with a high respect for both the environment and the people who are involved in every stage of manufacturing.
As reasonable as these goals may seem, it turns out that the odds were stacked against us … but with a little heart and soul, we found a way. This article is to give you some tips on how you, too, can find a way through an industry that seems dead set on continuing in its harmful ways.
CHEMISTRY, MATERIALS & PACKAGING -
For the first time, Greenpeace has released a report on the progress of its Detox campaign to eliminate hazardous chemicals from clothing production by 2020. The 80 companies who have signed on over the first seven years of the initiative represent a combined 15 percent of global clothing production — and all of them are “making good progress” to cut 11 priority chemicals and improve transparency.
SUPPLY CHAIN -
After a full decade of consultation among large numbers of stakeholders from the mining industry, organized labor, nonprofits, impacted communities and businesses — a global Standard for Responsible Mining was released today.
SUPPLY CHAIN -
‘I would like to source more sustainable cotton, but I’m not quite sure where to start. There seems to be an awful lot of standards out there, and I’m not quite sure what the differences are between them.’
‘I’d like to increase the volumes of sustainable cotton I buy, but I’m worried about sourcing different types of sustainable cotton — does a portfolio approach work?’
‘I want to source sustainable cotton. I just want this to be easy. I wonder how other brands are doing it.’
SUPPLY CHAIN -
KnowTheChain has released its second ranking of the top 40 global information and communications technology (ICT) companies on their efforts and disclosure related to eradicating forced labor.
COLLABORATION -
At the 2018 Global Forum on Responsible Business and Recruitment this week, the Consumer Goods Forum (CGF) called on businesses around the world to play their part in the fight to end all forms of forced labor. The event, co-hosted by the CGF and Institute for Human Rights and Business (IHRB), brought together key stakeholders to discuss how best to galvanize efforts and drive real progress on the issue.
LEADERSHIP -
Last week, over 2,000 representatives from our global community of sustainability practitioners, brand strategists, product and service innovators, thought leaders and other change-makers converged at SB’18 Vancouver to share their latest insights on a multitude of themes pertinent to all of those committed to improving business around the world. Here, we dig into a topic at the heart of all lasting change: Transformational leadership.
PRESS RELEASE -
BillerudKorsnäs, a sustainability leader in the global packaging industry and provider of packaging solutions, is encouraging action against ocean litter in a series of just-announced U.S. events, in theme with this year's World Oceans Day. The Swedish company has outlined an ambitious mission to challenge conventional packaging and bring more sustainable practices to the industry.
"Between the growing chorus from consumers to address single-use packaging waste to reports from ocean researchers on declining ocean health, the problem of ocean litter has reached critical awareness," said Peter Malmqvist, BillerudKorsnäs Marketing Director, Americas. "What we need now is collaboration for sustainable development."
BEHAVIOR CHANGE -
Jennifer Motles Svigilsky detests cigarettes. But she recently began focusing on the ambitious vision to help 1.1B smokers quit smoking within a generation. Which is how she found herself in front of a crowded room at SB’18 Vancouver, representing one of the world’s largest cigarette companies.
SUPPLY CHAIN -
What if rating brands and retailers, and not just suppliers, is the key to better supply chains? That is the goal behind a new index from Better Buying. The index provides sustainability professionals with previously inaccessible data about supply chains, as it empowers suppliers themselves to assess purchasing practices of 65 brands and retailers in the global apparel, footwear and household textiles industries globally.
COLLABORATION -
Yesterday at SB'18 Vancouver, Kevin Hagen — VP of Environment, Social and Governance Strategy at Iron Mountain — and Dimitar Vlahov, Director of Content Development at Sustainable Brands (SB), offered a sneak peek at the SB Brand Transformation Roadmap (SM). Built for an executive audience, the first-of-its-kind Roadmap is a framework any organization can use as a compass towards setting goals and measuring progress towards becoming a truly "sustainable brand."
LEADERSHIP -
The world is complex and interconnected. When we pull one lever in a system, it ripples throughout. Pull the right levers and you can solve some of the most complex problems, pull the wrong one and it can be disastrous. This is why it is critical to take a systems approach when solving complex, or what Sally Uren, CEO at Forum of the Future, calls “wicked” problems.
WASTE NOT -
Today, Savers® released its third annual State of Reuse Report, which reveals that while people consistently state they are donating or finding ways to extend the life of their items, there is still a long journey ahead to fully embrace reuse — as 60 percent of North Americans shop secondhand only once a year or less.
PRESS RELEASE -
Did you know recycling one glass bottle saves enough energy to power a computer for 30 minutes? And recycling 16 aluminum cans saves the energy equivalent of one gallon of gasoline. A series of small actions like these can turn into great things when they are brought together. And that’s what The Recycling Partnership is all about. The Recycling Partnership is a rapidly growing national nonprofit committed to improving curbside residential recycling and boosting recycling education in cities across America — one community at a time, family by family, bin by bin. They’ve already impacted 33 million households in just four years!
NEW METRICS -
More and more clothing brands are taking it upon themselves to dive deeper into the impacts of their garments, increasing transparency around and improving their materials, processes and operations as a whole.
WALKING THE TALK -
In recent conversation with Marc Pritchard, Chief Brand Officer at P&G, we spent our time talking about shifting out from old paradigms and models, to create new frameworks for building brands and advancing sustainability. Here are Pritchard’s top five paradigms to shift:
CLEANTECH -
Mars Australia has signed 20 year power-purchase agreements (PPA) with Total Eren to generate the equivalent of 100 percent of Mars’ electricity from renewable energy by 2020. In addition to its latest agreement in Australia, Mars is already using or purchasing renewable electricity to cover 100 percent of its operations in Belgium, Brazil, Lithuania, the United Kingdom and the United States.
ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE -
Transparency has become a bit of a buzzword in the fashion industry and judging by the number of times it was mentioned at this year’s Copenhagen Fashion Summit, it is a trend that we are not going to shake anytime soon. Quite the contrary, transparency is reshaping how brands and retailers interact with their suppliers and consumers. But can it really transform the entire fashion industry? C&A Foundation’s Leslie Johnston hosted a panel of experts to find out.