YORK – The last 12 months have been a memorable time for the Ecotextile Talks team with our podcast hosts joined by a series of industry experts and key decision makers, all discussing the major issues around environmental stewardship in the fashion and textile sectors in 2024.
We launched the year with an insightful three-part series, produced in partnership with the Apparel Impact Institute (Aii).
To kick things off, our host Philip Berman enjoyed a wide-ranging discussion on the Aii’s Climate Solutions Portfolio with the organisation’s chief impact officer Kurt Kipka, and environmental scientist and consultant Linda Greer.
The second part saw Phil, again with Greer, joined by Ecotextile News correspondent Phil Patterson, to shine a spotlight on a new ‘industry first’ tool, the Aii's Solutions Impact Evaluator – aka the ‘Ready Reckoner’ – which is used to objectively compare the overall CO2 savings of different innovations and solutions across all parts of the textile manufacturing process.
In March we took a deep dive into a new series in association with Cascale – the new name of the Sustainable Apparel Coalition, to explore the importance of ‘measuring for impact’.
The series began with a conversation with Jeremy Lardeau, senior VP of the Higg Index at Cascale, and Quentin Thorel, group head of sustainability for CIEL Textile, and was followed by a session with Elisabeth von Reitzenstein, senior director of public affairs at Cascale, and Baptiste Carriere-Pradal, co-founder of the 2BPolicy consultancy, to discuss how best to prepare for new European Union legislation on responsibly communicating sustainability information to consumers.
In May, we saw the return of the ‘Big Closets, Small Planet’ podcast with a look at how societies relate to profit, and how this relationship affects global sustainability challenges in the fashion industry and beyond.
Host Mike Schragger, founder of the Sustainable Fashion Academy, was joined by Dr. Jennifer Hinton, author and post-doctoral Fellow at the Centre for Environmental and Climate Science at the University of Lund who offered a focus on how to transition societies beyond the pursuit of economic growth and profit.
This was followed in July by a hard-hitting interview with Scott Nova, executive director of the Workers Rights Consortium in Washington DC, who gave valuable insight into the reliability of social compliance audits in China’s textile sector.
Ecotextile Talks took a turn for the inter-planetary in September with an ‘out of this world’ conversation with Claudia Kersten, managing director of the Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS).
Listeners heard a fascinating discussion on how GOTS is working alongside the European Space Agency (ESA) and artificial intelligence specialist Marple to monitor Indian organic cotton crops from space – using AI and satellite imagery to verify farming techniques and identify fraud.
Things returned to earth at the end of the month, but were no less dramatic, with Berman joined by Ricardo Gama, a senior associate solicitor with law firm Leigh Day, and the lawyer at the heart of a legal bid to block a potential public listing in London by ultra-fast fashion giant Shein.
And the year was rounded off by an unmissable conversation with Marie-Jeanne Gaertner, project and policy officer at RREUSE (Reuse and Recycling European Union Social Enterprises) to find out why the textile reuse and recycling sector in the European Union is facing an unprecedented crisis.
Be sure to join us again in 2025 for many more memorable insights into the key sustainability issues impacting the fashion and textile industries.
