The Jeans Redesign project | H&M US

For pervasive transparency,“semi-green” Instagram influencers must be taken with a pinch of salt and the bar raised for fashion activism 
A recent collaboration between Ethiopian supermodel Liya Kebede’s fashion label Lemlem and Swedish clothing brand H&M that dropped on Earth Day (April 22) was seen as antithetical by some. They saw Lemlem’s avowal to slow and sustainable fashion, its commitment to transparency and empowerment of the African supply chain in conflict with H&M’s fast fashion model.

Plastics have enjoyed exceptional growth in production for decades and are used extensively across a multitude of sectors including packaging, construction, electronics, automotive and agriculture. Prompted by concerns over plastic waste generation and impacts on terrestrial and marine ecosystems, in 2018 the European Commission published a strategy on plastics which was followed by legislative actions such as ban of certain single-use plastic items. In 2019 out of about 29 million tonnes of plastic collected in the EU the majority (68%) was either incinerated for energy recovery or ended up in landfills.  There has been a debate for some time about whether the concept of chemical recycling can be among the solutions for managing plastic waste. Chemical recycling technologies have not yet reached the market at scale although recently there have been several announcements for the development of new plastic recycling plans in Europe and abroad. Objective of this event will be to bring together stakeholders from the plastics value chain to discuss whether and under what conditions chemical recycling technologiesaviercould make a contribution to the EU’s circularity and decarbonisation objectives.  

In our ‘throw away’ society, the linear model of make, use and discard is depleting the resources of our planet – and our pockets. The solution is a circular economy, where nothing is wasted, rather it gets reused or transformed. While standards and initiatives abound for components of this, such as recycling, there is no current agreed global vision on how an organization can complete the circle. A new ISO technical committee for the circular economy has just been formed to do just that. It’s a well-known fact that the rise in consumerism and disposable products is choking our planet and exhausting it at the same time. Before we reach the day where there is more plastic in the sea than fish