Why Apparel and Footwear Cannot Afford to Ignore Sustainability

Vermont Green Football Club announced its launch Oct. 12, bringing sustainability into sports and semi-professional soccer to Burlington.  The club starts in May 2022 and will play its home matches at UVM’s Virtue Field. Vermont Green intends to use its platform to focus on environmental justice and sustainability by partnering with environmental justice organizations and selling sustainably-sourced merchandise, according to the club’s website.  “We felt that [environmental justice] was the perfect lens, the perfect way to talk about the issues, to bring awareness to the issues, and to think strategically about how do we as a club put forward solutions to some of these things,” Chief Purpose Officer Keil Corey said. 

The Treasury will issue its first sovereign green bond “in the second half of this year,” as announced by Pablo de Ramón-Laca, Director General of the Treasury and Financial Policy. He revealed this in his opening speech at the Ofiso 2021 Annual Meeting on Sustainable Finance, which was recently held in virtual format. De Ramón-Laca explained that this first bond will form part of the Treasury’s Green Bond Issuance Programme, which aims to be a “structural component of the Treasury’s financing policy.” He also announced a National Sustainable Finance Plan, on which an inter-ministerial working group chaired by the Vice-President and Minister for Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera, is already working.

Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras is developing an innovative model to tackle electronic wastes (e-waste) by linking stakeholders in the formal and informal economy, according to officials. Called “e-Source”, the exchange platform that will serve as an online marketplace for Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) and facilitate a formal supply chain between various stakeholders (buyers and sellers). The initiative is being spearheaded by Indo-German Centre for Sustainability (IGCS). According to officials, the initiative aims to make ”Waste Electrical Electronic Equipment” (WEEE) a key resource in the evolution of a circular economy by establishing traceability and recovery of post-consumer e-waste in the market.