Category Archives: climate change

climate change, couture, economics, ethics, fashion, innovation, luxury, manufacturing, sustainability

Prada Seeks to Fashion Greener Luxury Brand Under Future CEO

Prada has moved to burnish its sustainability credentials in recent years. In November 2021, Prada said it would use more low-impact materials in its products and packaging, and lower greenhouse gas emissions as part of a carbon-neutrality push.

While sustainability scores are “fundamental” for evaluating corporate greenness, they can fail to capture the nuances of individual business models, Bertelli said in an interview Tuesday while attending a conference in Lisbon on sustainability and ocean preservation co-hosted by Prada and UNESCO.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-06-30/prada-seeks-to-fashion-a-greener-luxury-brand-under-future-ceo
archetypes, artificial intelligence, cities, climate change, culture mapping, dystopia, education, ethics, forecasting, global, government, society

Can humanity leave nature behind?

In the face of environmental collapse, humanity may need to turn to artificial replacements for nature – how might we avoid the most dystopian of these futures? Researcher Lauren Holt makes the case for a broader form of “offsetting” to help balance technology with natural systems.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220608-should-we-detach-ourselves-from-nature

climate change, farming, food, innovation, manufacturing, retail, sustainability

Air Protein creates fake steak from CO2 that replicates taste and texture of meat

While beef generates 70 kilograms of greenhouse gas emissions for every kilogram produced, while also causing widespread deforestation, Air Protein founder Lisa Dyson claims that its protein production emits far less carbon and doesn’t require land or animals.

“We look at the analysis from cradle to gate, prior to when the product is consumed,” she told Dezeen. “On this basis, our vision is to build the first carbon-negative meat company.”

https://www-dezeen-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.dezeen.com/2022/04/14/air-protein-meat-alternative-recycled-carbon-dioxide/amp/
climate change, economics, ethics, fashion, forecasting, global, language, manufacturing, retail

Redefining ‘Sustainable Fashion’

“Sustainable,” implies “able to continue over a period of time,” according to the Cambridge Dictionary. “Fashion,” on the other hand, implies change over time. To reconcile the two is impossible. No wonder striving for net-zero emissions makes us all feel like Don Quixote, tilting at windmills.

Because there is no simple answer to solving fashion’s role in climate change. Even the obvious one — don’t make, or buy, any new stuff, and don’t throw away any old stuff — has negative implications for employment, know-how and self-definition. (After all, people have been adorning themselves to express themselves for pretty much as long as they have understood themselves as “selves.”) The crucial issue for each of us, no matter which side of the equation we are on, is thinking about and understanding the effects of the choices we make, so we can make better ones in the future.

archetypes, climate change, ethics, fashion, generations, manufacturing, social media, society, sustainability

Gen Z Has a Fast Fashion Problem. That’s Bad for the Climate and Equity

A 2020 survey by Vogue Business found that more than half of its Gen Z participants bought most of their clothes from fast-fashion brands, like H&M, Gap, Zara and Forever 21. Market research firm Mintel has reported that Gen Z, generally seen as those born between 1997 and 2010, also buys more clothes than older generations, with the average Gen-Zer owning hundreds of dollars worth of outfits that never get worn at all. It’s a trend that analysts say is fueled by a social media culture that pressures youth and young adults to never wear the same outfit twice, as well as an industry that has made impulse buying and returning items far easier.

https://insideclimatenews.org/todaysclimate/gen-z-has-a-fast-fashion-problem-thats-bad-for-the-climate-and-equity/
cinema, climate change, dystopia, forecasting, generations, robots, society, sustainability

How WALL-E Predicted the Future

The film depicts an Earth rendered uninhabitable by climate change, with the last living humans obese space tourists who communicate solely via video call and rely on meal replacement smoothies for sustenance. There are eerie similarities to much of our current reality, with extreme weather events rising in frequency, obesity rates soaring, Zoom calls taking over our lives, and the rise of meal replacement firms such as Soylent and Huel.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-20/pixar-s-wall-e-dystopian-predictions-came-true
climate change, dystopia, ethics, government, language, politics, sustainability

68% of U.S. execs admit their companies are guilty of greenwashing

The anonymous survey, conducted by the Harris Poll for Google Cloud with executives primarily at companies with more than 500 employees, has mixed messages: 80% of executives gave their companies an “above-average” rating for environmental sustainability. The majority of leaders both at large corporations and startups said that sustainability is a priority for them; 93% said that they’d be willing to tie their compensation to ESG (environmental, social, and governance) goals, or already do. But 65% said that while they wanted to make progress on sustainability efforts, they didn’t actually know how to do that.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90740501/68-of-u-s-execs-admit-their-companies-are-guilty-of-greenwashing
climate change, couture, ethics, fashion, forecasting, luxury, manufacturing, retail, sustainability

Inside LVMH’s biggest sustainability plan yet

Capelli says LVMH is experimenting with new material innovations and dye technologies, and plans to soon showcase some “first experimentation” with Colorifix, a startup that uses synthetic biology to replace industrial chemical dyes with nature-friendly alternatives. Much of the other work that LVMH is doing is internal, he explains. The company plans to share sustainability details with consumers at the product level eventually; that will be a slow rollout, with a goal to share some level of information for all products by 2026 and for all products to be “regeneratively designed” by 2030.

https://www.voguebusiness.com/sustainability/inside-lvmhs-biggest-sustainability-plan-yet