• Can fast fashion slow down? It’s not that simple

    One of fast fashion’s biggest players says it’s taking major steps toward a more sustainable business model. But in an industry predicated on low cost, low quality and high production volume, experts say it won’t be simple.

    “It’s hard to see how they actually deliver on their emissions reductions targets,” said Ken Pucker, a professor at the Fletcher School at Tufts University in Medford, Mass., who focuses on sustainability.

    “Because volumes are going to continue to go up.”

     

    https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/fast-fashion-sustainability-targets-1.6913112

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  • Planning Your Holiday Wardrobe? Ask Yourself If You Really Need Another Fast-Fashion Polyester Dress

    With summer comes plastic–polyester dresses, synthetic bikinis, water bottles, and so on. I wonder how many of you are thinking about the repercussions of all of that. I know that today’s fashion motto is “circularity will save us all.” I embarked on a quest a couple of years ago in the form of a short documentary Fashionscapes: A Circular Economy, but I am sorry to break it to you: a recent conversation with former Timberland COO Ken Pucker (and his brilliant analysis in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, A Circle That Isn’t Easily Squared) posited fashion and circularity as an oxymoron.

    https://en-vogue-me.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/en.vogue.me/fashion/holiday-wardrobe-fast-fashion-polyester-dress-livia-firth/amp/

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  • Why Mushroom Leather (and Other New Materials) Are Struggling to Scale

    Late last month, leading materials start-up Bolt threads said it had paused operations for its leather alternative Mylo. The company’s struggle to raise funds points to deeper challenges for the sector, writes Kenneth Pucker.

     

    https://www.businessoffashion.com/opinions/sustainability/next-generation-materials-innovation-mylo-bolt-threads-mushroom-leather/?utm_source=newsletter_dailydigest&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily_Digest_130723&utm_term=NAD7JRM5XRE2BA7JCY7ZD5EOKQ&utm_content=top_story_2_title

     

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  • Carbon Neutral Claims Under Investigation In Greenwashing Probe

    Last month, the European Parliament set out to ban environmental claims about carbon neutrality based on carbon offsetting schemes. This has caused ripple implications for sustainability and marketing teams, especially their public-facing approach on how to reach ‘net zero’.

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/amynguyen/2023/06/16/carbon-neutral-claims-under-investigation-in-greenwashing-probe/?sh=2e710bfa6431

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  • You Might Want to Think Twice About Clothing Brands That Push Rental, Resale, and Recycling

    This month, three shirts, two dresses, and a pair of shorts arrived at my door. They’re mine, but only for a month. After that, I’ll pack them in a reusable tote bag and send them to a warehouse in Pennsylvania, where they’ll be cleaned and shipped to their next (temporary) owner.

    Along with more than 150,000 other people—most of them, like me, women between the ages of 25 and 35—I subscribe to Nuuly, a rental service operated by URBN, the parent company of brands including Anthropologie, Free People, and Urban Outfitters. For just shy of $100 a month, I get a regular influx of new clothing—and a chance to clear my conscience.

    https://time.com/6285257/is-clothing-rental-resale-recycling-sustainable-nuuly/

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  • Circularity Is a Fashionable Fantasy

    The buzzy concept is a chimaera that distracts from the root cause of fashion’s worsening environmental impact: overconsumption, argues Kenneth Pucker

     

     

     

     

     

    https://www.businessoffashion.com/opinions/sustainability/op-ed-circularity-is-a-fashionable-fantasy/?utm_source=newsletter_dailydigest&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily_Digest_260523&utm_term=3PNLIJGNHNEHBCFER4M45JG3V4&utm_content=top_story_3_title

     

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  • A Circle That Isn’t Easily Squared

    Industries ranging from soft drinks to furniture to electronics to fashion follow a one-way path of “make, take, and waste.” This linear operating system is straining resources, polluting oceans, and generating mountains of waste. Unrelenting pressure for growth continues to stress biodiversity and accelerate atmospheric warming, thereby increasing the intensity and incidence of drought, flooding, and migration. As a result, the public’s consent to resource-consumptive industries is increasingly at risk.

     

    https://ssir.org/articles/entry/a_circle_that_isnt_easily_squared

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  • Important Problems with Andreas Feiner

    In this episode we speak with Ken Pucker, who is an advisor at Berkshire Partners, lectures about sustainability at the TUFTS university.
    You will get interesting insights in his career at Timberland and the pioneer role that Timberland took in regards to ESG.
    Ken will tell you why he decided to leave Timberland in the end and go to live with his family in Jerusalem for a while.
    Nowadays, Ken is a Professor of Practice at TUFTS University, where he lectures on ESG-related topics such as ESG investments and why companies urgently need to take ESG matters into account in order to remain or become attractive for investors.

    https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/3-the-important-role-of-esg-for-companies-with/id1683622451?i=1000613984210

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