The Sustainable Angle's Materials Solutions Series
This digital Materials Solutions series seeks to inform and educate on the place of specific fibre categories in a preferred materials mix, and their important place in reshaping and creating a responsible, sustainable and restorative fashion industry.
Materials play a critical role in building a fashion industry that places people and planet as priorities, and the creation of equitable economic systems that replace the current unsustainable, polluting and waste generating model.
Each episode will include:
- Presentation of key information of each fibre type (fibre demand, environmental impacts, low impact alternatives, sustainability information)
- Examples of materials from our Future Fabrics exhibitors
- Conversation with guest speaker, and Q&A with The Sustainable Angle team
- Cheat sheet with useful links, perfect for your next sourcing!
1. INTRODUCTION with Carole Collet (Director of Maison/0 (The Central Saint Martins LVMH Sustainable Innovation Programme))
This session frames our current materials landscape, and explores the crucial place of a diverse, responsibly created materials mix around the six material categories covered in following episodes.
Our speakers will also discuss the principles of regenerative design and how these can support and inform the creation of a responsible industry for the future.
2. COTTON with Sarah Compson (International Development Manager at Soil Association)
Conventional cotton accounts for a quarter of global fibre demand, but is grown in intensively farmed unsustainable monocultures around the globe with its roots in the slave trade.
Learn how best practice cotton agricultural practices can transform the environmental and social impacts of this fibre, and its role in carbon sequestration. Understand the critical impacts of this fibre, and which types of cotton to prioritise and why.
3. BAST FIBRES + AGRICULTURAL WASTE with Gill Gledhill (GGHQ Fashion Intelligence Ltd Managing Director) and Hannes Schoenegger (Bananatex Co-Founder and CEO)
Learn about the properties and inherent sustainability credentials of the bast category of fibres, including flax, hemp, ramie, nettle, etc. and the new agriculturally harvested waste category of grown cellulose.
Discover how the ingenious use of cellulose from agricultural waste is reframing new material innovation of the future.
4. PROTEIN FIBRES with Hanna Denes (Textile Exchange Senior Standards Manager) and Jackie Andrews (Senior Lecturer in Sustainability and Textiles Development Strategist)
The use of animal fibres has a long history, offering complex structures and properties that man made fibres cannot replicate.
Discover best practice initiatives for sourcing protein fibres avoiding land use issues, unethical practices, processing impacts, and intensive farming.
5. REGENERATED CELLULOSICS with Claire Bergkamp (Stella McCartney, WW Sustainability & Innovation Director)
This category of cellulosics is an important man-made fibre source and its comfortable and absorbent properties are much sought after as an alternative to cotton.
Understand the provenance and processing systems that enable best practice choices in this fibre category. Discover the next generation of regenerated fibres poised to provide more diverse fibre sources.
6. SYNTHETICS & RECYCLED with Steven Cheung (Recyctex Founder and President) and Scott Echols (Programme Director ZHDC, Roadmap To Zero)
From the middle of the 20th century, synthetic fibres have dominated our fibre landscape, and currently account for two thirds of global fibre demand.
Learn how to refocus our reliance on the petroleum derived group of fibres. Discover how recycling technologies can limit impacts and utilise waste streams to recapture value and contribute to the circular economy.
7. LEATHER & SKIN ALTERNATIVES with Yoann Regent (Kering, Sustainable Sourcing - Bio-Diversity & Animal Welfare Specialist)
Animal skins have been valued as a durable by-product of the meat industry but current intensive farming practices are contributing to the decimation of rainforests and contributing to CO2 emissions.
Learn about the place of responsibly farmed and processed animal. Explore innovative alternatives that meet demands for non-animal products that limit petrochemical use.
8. SUMMARY: FUTURE PROOFING FASHION and how the fashion industry can play a positive role
This session provides an overview of the diverse material directions that will contribute to future proofing our industry.
Learn how the fashion industry can play a positive role. Discover the material solutions that can be climate positive, protect biodiversity and the oceans. Explore how new materials solutions, directions and opportunities contribute to shaping a responsible future for fashion.