From Threat To Thread

I've talked a lot over the past couple of months about ocean plastic, and how it's a great untapped resource waiting to happen. As new technologies develop around fibres and fabrics made from recycled petrochemical products, it becomes clearer that the island of junk floating somewhere in the Pacific could soon have miners descending on it like vultures.

The starting shot for that race might just have been fired. Sportswear giant Adidas, have, as I reported a few months back, teamed up with environmental initiative Parley For The Oceans to create a new shoe sourced almost entirely from ocean plastics. The uppers, normally made with synthetic fibres, have instead been woven from recycled plastic yarn. Meanwhile the midsoles have been 3-D printed from recycled fishing nets, one of the biggest problems in the creation of ocean junk.

All of which would be admirable. However, this is no limited edition vanity rollout, designed to make Adidas look good. The AdidasxParley shoe is reported to have a million-pair manufacture cycle. The plan is to get these shoes onto as many feet as possible, and prove that scaled-up sustainable fashion manufacture can work and be profitable. More importantly, that the shoes look good and feel comfortable. That shouldn't be too tricky. Let's face it–athletic footwear is mostly plastic these days anyway. Who cares where it comes from?

In a clever move, Adidas and Parley are also aiming to make ocean plastic-derived athletic wear a desirable item. They've launched football jerseys for AC Milan and Bayern Munich made from the stuff, that will be featured in special upcoming matches. That's going to get fans salivating, and spike up demand.

This is smart marketing, and really good news for the future exploitation of ocean plastics. Passionate football supporters will want these shirts, and will be prepared to listen to the story behind them. I think AdidasxParley may have just played a blinder.

For more, head to the Adidas site.

Both Sides Of the Story

The tone of our last couple of posts has been a little... well, bleak, I guess. It's hard to be light-hearted when the world seems to be collapsing around your ears.

The thing is, though, a lot of that attitude can simply be down to viewpoint. Shift that and things can take on a different, more hopeful sheen.

The reportage that is starting to build around the parlours state of fast fashion is good news for one reason. In order to solve a problem, you first have to acknowledge that the problem exists. And all of a sudden, the public has become aware of the massive issues surrounding the way we make and consume mass market fashion. As Orsola De Castro notes in a great article for The Huffington Post, the situation is comparable to the food industry. There have been huge changes over the past twenty years as we have woken up to the fact that what the big food business wants is not that good for us. Sure, there's still a long way to go, but legislation and public will is moving us slowly towards a more sustainable model.

There's a sense within the fashion industry itself that things need to change. As climate change becomes a clear and present danger, old methods can no longer be considered. Sure, we can sneer at the limited runs of so-called sustainable clothing from high street behemoths, or their tiny percentage of ranges shifted over to organic methods. But at the same time they are beginning to adopt practices and procedures that ethical superstars like Patagonia and Nudie Jeans have had at the heart of their business since the beginning. You have to start somewhere. The simple fact is that you can't turn a juggernaut around on a dime. These things do take time.

And there are increasingly encouraging signs of change, particularly when it comes to worker relationships with the big brands. No less an entity than Gap, long resistant to to any sort of supply-chain transparency, announced last week that they would be opening their records as to which factories they use in developing countries and markets. This is a huge step-change for a company who have lost a lot of good will for their stance on, for example, compensation for Rana Plaza families.

Now, you could argue that this is simply a PR exercise to put a bit of shine back on a tarnished public image. Or, you could view it as the first step in the right direction for an industry that has long been walking on a dark and dirty road. Either way, the end result is a positive one. If the destination is worth getting to, does it matter how you make the journey?

Look, this post is a bit of a meander, I know. But it's really important to try and hold onto a sense of perspective in an area where the situation can change very quickly. The View From The Pier can sometimes be foggy and hard to see clearly. But we do our best to give you a reasonably balanced idea of what's going on. There is despair, but there's also hope. We need to hang onto that.

Stella Flies The Flag For TeamGB!

What an Olympics for TeamGB! From the starting pistol everyone at Rio has performed above expectations, staying ahead of the impressive rate of medal winning that we achieved during the London Games. From the champions we knew would deliver like Mo Farah and Sir Bradley, to the surprising number of new faces stepping up to the podium (amazing achievements by the gymnastics team this time around) everyone has performed out of their skins and done their country proud.

As ever, our Olympians have presented a sharp, smart image at the Games, helped by graphic t-shirts and warmdown wear in bold, bright designs. Which is where events enter the remit of this blog, of course, as those garments were designed by a favourite of The View: Stella McCartney.

A standout feature of the new kit is the Olympic Coat Of Arms, designed by Stella in conjunction with the Royal College Of Arms. Featuring lions, the national flowers and a crown of medals, the design is celebratory and unashamedly patriotic. That didn't mean Stella had an easy ride with it, though. She told Vogue:

"I really fought for the coat of arms. I had to go through so many governing bodies, BOA, BPA, to get approval - and I'm not used to that. It's a bit like being back in school. But I wanted to gift the nation."

The boldness of the design, which could be mixed up and reincorporated into other elements, gave Stella the freedom to present a range that was never boring while presenting a unified front. This was important. She explains:

"The obvious thing is to work with the Union Flag. But what I wanted to do this time was to have imagery and icons within the treatment that felt individualised. So every single piece of the kit is different - different pieces of the design have been pulled out and blown up - and that meant that we had to style it more, create outfits from different pieces. Whenever I talk to the athletes, they say they want to feel like a team. I wanted them to feel like one."

The kit is technologically advanced as well, with innovations from team supplier Adidas meaning that the clothes are lighter and more capable of keeping athletes cool during events. It's the perfect balance of style and function, and has helped Team GB to present themselves at their very best.

You can buy Stella's designs, and at least pretend that you're an Olympic athlete. On your marks, get set, go to the TeamGB shop and fly the flag!

 




 

Adidas Are Changing The Game On Closed-Loop Recycling

It's very easy to point fingers at the big manufacturers when it comes to laying blame over the environmental and workplace abuses that have made fast fashion such a toxic proposition. But you need to remember that the big brands really don't like the negative publicity attached to their name. Slowly but surely, they're taking steps to ease back on the damage and actually start to do a little good.
Let's bear in mind that names like Nike and Adidas have huge resources that they can bring to bear onto a particular problem. If they want to crack a nut, that nut gets cracked. Many of these companies now have CEOs at the helm that see the benefit in making their supply lines more sustainable. Five years ago, notions like cradle-to-cradle would have been unknown in the boardrooms of the high street big brands. That's no longer the case.
Adidas has started up a major research project into the notion of the endlessly recyclable shoe. Working in conjunction with WRAP the project, called Sports Infinity, aims to find and develop new composites that can be used over and again to create goods that are customisable to the user's specifications. Adidas says:

“...every gram of a football boot could be broken down and recycled into a 3-D shapeable material for the next creator to mould into their dream product without the use of adhesives.”

Adidas are calling this, with a wrinkle of self-awareness, "game-changing." And they're not wrong. This could have massive implications for the footballing world. Parents with growing football-mad kids would no longer have to buy and bin a new set of boots every few months. Instead they could be remodelled and recustomised. All of this done without the need for toxic chemicals.
Glenn Bennett, executive board member of global operations at Adidas, added:

“Sport Infinity is the next step in our commitment to innovation and sustainability. This project will close the sustainability loop, creating a high-performance product that can always be recycled.”

Extrapolate this development up to the fashion world and you can see what a big deal Sport Infinity's innovations could potentially be. Closed-loop manufacturing would chop landfill waste numbers off at the knees and drastically drop the use of toxic nasties. The introduction of clothing that's easily customisable by the end buyer would mean a radical retink in tired old notions of seasonal ranges and sizings that don't quite work for the model-imperfect human frame. Sports technology is often an innovation pressure-cooker. Where they lead, the fashion world will follow.
Let's put it like this. If a company as big as Adidas are looking seriously at closed-loop recycling, then it's about to become the next big thing.

Adidas: Making The Right Move In Bangladesh

In a move that's raised eyebrows in the boardrooms of sportswear multinationals and delighted campaigners, Adidas has become the first big-league name to sign the Accord on Fire And Building Safety in Bangladesh. The big-three manufacturer has been under fire in the past for their supposedly lax attitude towards worker rights and welfare in their South Asian factories.

Earlier in the year, the company were forced to pay nearly $2million in compensation to the employees of the shuttered PT Kizone factory in Indonesia: a payment that only happened after bad-tempered court appearances.

By signing up to a legally binding agreement that holds them accountable for the health and well-being of their textile and assembly staff across Bangladesh, Adidas are giving a clear signal to their critics, and putting the spotlight onto their competitors who haven't yet put their names on the dotted line.

There's little doubt that this is a hard-nosed business decision as much as a sign of corporate compassion. The rotten publicity over PT Kizone led to a raft of top US colleges cancelling their contracts with Adidas. If the company can prove they've changed, they might just be able to lure influential schools like Cornell back into the fold.

Whatever the motivation, the end result is a good one, and United Students Against Sweatshops, the college association that brokered the boycott, are rightfully celebrating. In fact, they're ramping up the pressure. The Worker Rights Consortium has now formally recommended that universities require brands producing collegiate apparel in Bangladesh to sign the Accord. 

It's another example of the Detox Effect I was talking about earlier in the week. The most vulnerable part of any corporate structure is its image, a fragile thing that it will do anything, including root and branch changes to the way it does business, to protect.

Changes

Change is a funny thing. When you're not expecting it, it can be on you like an express train. When you're looking for it, it's more like the slow stopping service, grinding towards you at a snail's pace, stopping at every third lamp-post.
For those of us that want to see a more responsible, ethical fashion industry, the pace of change can be frustratingly slow. The Ethical Consumer notes in their latest shopping guide that the average UK female buys half her bodyweight in clothes this year, and owns four times as many garments as she did in 1980. Meanwhile, despite campaigns and increased public awareness, sweated and forced labour around the world seems to be growing to meet that voracious demand. It can look like the train is stuck a long way down the line.
But there's always hope. That average UK female also says that she's more likely than ever to buy clothes that last, making investment choices rather than cheap impulse buys. Market research from Mintel shows that:

“the disposable fashion trend could have peaked and 2011 may see shoppers reassessing value for money and putting more emphasis on sustainability, integrity and durability.”

Meanwhile, recent revelations about the use of forced child labour in the cotton industry in Uzbekistan has led to big UK brands like Asda and global names like Adidas and H&M declaring an outright ban on the use of fabric from the region. Add to this big results like the action taken to safeguard Chinese rivers following Greenpeace's exposure of pollution by textile plants, and the future starts to look a bit more rosy.
But we need to keep an eye on the manufacturers, who have a spotty history of responsible behaviour. Use of PVC by clothing brands had died off following a spate of publicity about its toxicity. Now, bizarrely, companies like H&M have started using it again.
It's down to us, really. Katy Brown of Ethical Consumer says:

"We know from experience that clothing companies will respond to consumer feedback which is why it's vital that shoppers keep up the pressure on companies to improve their ethical standards."

We are more powerful than we think, and until manufacturers and retailers have ethical standards baked into their best working practices, it's our job as informed consumers to keep them on track, and the pace of change on schedule.
Read more about the 2011 Ethical Consumer's report on their website.

Can a successful business be ethical?

The world is full of people who run businesses to the highest ethical standards - and fail. Many of these people look at successful small and large businesses and perceive an element of ruthlessness in business which they lack. They comfort themselves with the higher moral ground of their ethics, thinking that if their successful rival prosper then someone, somewhere must be suffering.

Were this to be the case then big successful businesses must surely create havoc amongst their suppliers, staff and customers. Do they merely pay lip service to their fancy ethical statements? After all Enron (apparently) had a 64 page "Code of Ethics".

The companies that throw themselves open to the most detailed examination are those that wear their ethics as the badge of their trade. Were I an oil / nuclear comany executive feeling a little heat of publicity then what better to get off the front page than to send out some investigators to dig some dirt on the squeaky clean?

Or why not simply buy into ethics? Who might I choose as a target? A company like Body Shop perhaps...

In April 2006 came the headline in The Independent "Body Shop's Popularity Plunges after L'Oreal Sale" "An index that tracks public perception of more than 1,000 consumer brands found that "satisfaction" with Body Shop had slumped by almost half".

The big ethical 'thing' with Body Shop is animal testing. None of its products or ingredients are tested by Body Shop or its suppliers on animals. Even though L'Oreal itself had stopped animal testing in 1989, it does admit that some of its suppliers test ingredients on animals......

Another trigger in this slump in Body Shop satisfaction was apparently that L'Oreal is owned to the tune of 26% by Nestle - corporate evil incarnate "voted the world's least responsible company in an internet poll". Anti Nestle campaigners (principally on the baby milk to third world issue) used this as another stick to hit Nestle with and Body Shop's reputation was a casualty.

(Incidentally, the internet poll is the UK's YouGov survey BrandIndex -possibly a nice guide to who the saints and sinners of the corporate world are perceived to be. However - its not measuring ethical performance - Chanel and Dior's position at the top of their relevant league is largely down to their product smelling somewhat better than Body Shop's. At least that's the perception).

But Body Shop is a separate entity to L'Oreal or Nestle. The better it does then the more money passes up the chain and the more the owners of the bigger businesses will notice that ethical branding and action actually pays. Hard headed people running these businesses will know better than to meddle with the ethical position of Body Shop and look to strengthen their own ethical positions. In today’s environment, that is a real possibility rather than just wishful thinking.

Body Shop are back near the top of all the tables in the BrandIndex survey. They will continue to be known as the company that is "Against Animal Testing". They were awarded 2006 Best Cruelty-free Cosmetics by PETA (People for the Ethical Treatments of Animals).In terms of fair trade sourcing they have "31 community trade suppliers in 24 countries" (see their Principle and Policies) and perhaps they could do better here because £5m (Body Shop's figure from July 2006) is spent on supplies from this programme against retail sales of £486m, and cost of those sales of £167m (source the 2006 Annual Report). What happens further down the supply chain in this area is more opaque than Adidas (say) because the emotional edge of ethics in the cosmetics industry is Animal Testing while in the clothing industry it's Child Labour. It's to Body Shop's credit here (and clever too) that they set the agenda for the whole cosmetics industry while for Adidas they were the victims. But Adidas are doing many things right and they top BrandIndex's sports industry's league.

Back to the question, can a successful business be ethical? Unquestionably yes - and more so today than ever previously it's becoming a requirement. Big corporations with dubious activities no doubt look for peripheral areas in which they can appear ethical but at least today ethics are there at the table.

Ethical brand profile - Adidas

Sparked by my last post, it seems a good idea to do a little bit of digging into the status of the brands that Pier 32 have access to so that our customers can make a better judgement on whether they fit in with their own ethical statements. Ethical behaviour towards humans and in terms of looking after our planet.

Adidas, who acquired Reebock recently, is the world's second biggest sports brand behind Nike. You'd expect them to be under the microscope and they know it. On their corporate website they have a section labelled sustainability "For the adidas Group, being a global leader in the sporting goods industry means improving working conditions in our suppliers’ factories and reducing our environmental impact as a business." with lots of information on all sorts of initiatives on the supply chain, human rights and the environment.

Leaving aside the case studies (we are always inclined to do this because of the ease of cherry picking when you have a mega budget) was is available is the "Supply Chain Code of Conduct" where they set out their standards and we we need to go to get to grips with their stated intentions on ethical purchasing.

"Outsourcing our production in no way absolves us of moral responsibility for the way our products are manufactured and the conditions they are produced under."

"Recognising this responsibility led us to create a set of guidelines for our suppliers that set minimum social, environmental and health and safety standards"

"Based on International Labour Organization conventions, the 'Workplace Standards' describe clear rules of conduct for issues such as the environment, safety in the workplace, child labour, and hours of work."

On the environment, adidas also look at their suppliers (95% of the environmental impact of adidas's operations is in the hands of suppliers) and have setting up supplier energy efficiency workshops. On VOC emissions "Our footwear suppliers have reduced VOC emissions from 140 grams/pair in 2000 to 19.3 grams/pair in 2006".

Globalisation impacts the environment through transport of goods not manufactured locally - adidas give the following statistics:

		Sea freight contributes 17.5 grams carbon dioxide CO2/km t
		Road freight by truck contributes 147 grams CO2/km t
		Airfreight contributes 903 grams CO2/km t.

adidas explain that the 2006 World Cup meant "time sensitive products had to be transported via air freight to meet customer requests" which implies at least that most products are transported by sea. Here's the backup data - http://www.adidas-group.com/en/sustainability/performance_data/environment.asp#freight

adidas are using carbon offsetting to lessen the impact of air travel by some of its people - but since this is the SEA team, involved in monitoring their sustainability targets etc it's just a drop in the ocean....

All in all, from my brief review adidas seem serious about what they are trying to do. And you'd expect nothing less. They will not be perfect by a long way but for a major multinational I expect what they are doing will be close to those setting the pace on ethical and environmental issues in clothing production.

Briefly digging for dirt, globalmarch.org disclose "Children in Pakistan were found stitching Adidas footballs, a major sponsor for the 2002 FIFA World Cup." Then it all get's all a bit murky and this article discloses "Adidas says Global March Against Child Labour photographed a counterfeit operation." The end result of all this was a major investment by FIFA in tracking abuses; and counterfeit operation or not, some good seems to have come out of this whole episode. My brief Google search on "adidas child labour" did not disclose any more recent episodes.

(As with all these brand profiles I'd be delighted for further information or help from readers).