2nd online sustainability meeting

 For the second time, I joined an online meeting through the Sustainable Fashion Collective hosted by Charlie Bradley Ross.  

In this meeting I was listening to Matthias Fuchs from Ocean Safe, a Swiss company that has developed a fibre that it claims to be biodegradable and certified by global initiatives as a safe product. It's composition is a secret though.  Matthias was not going to give any information about this. He only offered that it is a co-polyester not using any antimony based chemicals.  Instead he talked about and referenced the Cradle to Cradle philosophy and its certification label.  I have since bought the book by Michael Braungart and William McDonough that first coined this term and intend to read it over the summer.  Matthias also talked about the other standards in textiles such as GOTS - Global Organic Textile Standards. He explained about the 3 awards given by the Cradle to Cradle innovation group as bronze, silver and gold and quoted fashion designers who have achieved the gold standards, such as Stella McCartney, Ralph Lauren and I was surprised to hear that the clothing superstore C & A was amongst the list too.  

These are companies that have delved into the cradle to cradle philosophy through changing their practice to adopt a circular business model, exchanging clothes, repairing them to repurpose the materials.  

Matthias Fuchs offers a product that is already certified and by using his product, a designer can immediately reference the gold standard, maximising an ethical branding to attract the sustainable fashion conscious consumer. The product is a synthetic product to replace polyester and cotton. It is lab based and always biodegradable.  It is sold as a component kit.  A virtual kit to make a garment.  It uses virgin oil that is recycled and re-used.  At this point I was a little confused about the carbon footprint.  So much technology and science vocabulary can be overwhelming for me as someone who is not working in the oil industry.

I learnt a lot, however, from this meeting.  I learnt about the many initiatives that are driving the UN sustainability goals. I learnt many new terms and some new vocabulary.  I learnt that there is a lot of work going on globally but I feel that this is not common knowledge for the average consumer or maybe it is just me.  I understand that businesses want to be more sustainable and their is a need for more clothes production and fashions change.  

Matthias Fuchs may have the sustainability ethos at the heart of his work, but he has also found a profitable business model from it, which in turn is a marketable quality for the makers and designers who use his product.

It is thanks to this course for bringing my attention to these issues that I am now more aware, but I feel I am still only dipping my toe in the surface and am yet to really delve in deeply and embed the sustainability goals into practice.  Make do and mend, repurposing clothes and choosing sustainable fibres for textiles can all go towards meeting the goals.  Are they promoted in schools?  How can the message be communicated?  Practice and art. 

I'll be reading these books that I have stockpiled.