We see it as a tool for brands by offering a sync for their efforts towards achieving sustainable goals. Obviously, this will also help us to place the Delight Group as a pioneer organisation producing climate-positive cotton in India. Our positioning will be strong, and we foresee tremendous potential and opportunity with our association with Good Earth Cotton.

Of course, setting up Good Earth Cotton in India has come with some challenges. The climate is completely different to what we have previously worked with, as this is the first time the programme is being taken to another continent. Moving beyond that, there are different processes involved that have meant we needed to adapt some of the measurement tools and data capture points to reflect this.

If humanity is going to make progress, then we need deeply informed technical discussions about what the correct problems to solve are. The reason the fashion industry is worse off today is because greenwashing that oversimplifies highly technical issues is pervasive. Moreover, oversimplification is exactly what has gotten Higg MSI and those that use Higg MSI into lawsuits.

The energy price rise is threatening the textiles industry by a possible reduction or even suspension of production, with some companies considering moving production outside of the EU with a loss of jobs. This is especially true for SMEs, which struggle with tight marginalities while being at the beginning of the supply chain.

The garment industry is complex and opaque as there are many steps involved with trading companies in between, as raw materials are difficult to authenticate, and as the industry is not technology-driven and some of the involved parties are small, with piece embroidery workers working from home.

What the physical fair offers cannot be replaced by digital tools. The hand-feel of the fabrics, and face-to-face communication, for example, form part of an essential and unique interactive experience. With that being said, digital formats will remain a key part of our physical events, and they can be easily adjusted to accommodate the needs of different industries and individual trade fairs.

Over-consumption and over-production will have no place in the new economy. The consumer can see this already now as many brands promote new models of buying or leasing clothes or even shoes: Buying with a repair/return option and renting within a certain time frame of the life cycle of the textile product. The main goal is again becoming circular and not contributing to the growing landfills.

The second-hand clothing sector is a killer for the African manufacturing industry and jobs. Africans understand that Western countries just trash their clothes in Africa... The African governments and also people see this as a way to use Africa as a continent where they can get rid of their trash. ASFW is against the second-hand clothing business and believe that every country should trash its clothes within that same country.

First of all, leather by definition, is skin from animal. All kind of faux leather can only be called as synthetic material. In some countries, the use of the name ‘leather’ can only be used on genuine animal skin by law. We are also working on putting this into law in Taiwan.

The biggest shift for our whole sector—including the denim universe—is the huge increase in consciousness. Everyone has realised what raw materials are really worth. There is more education around those contexts and a growing interest in details such as social issues or efficiency. We are aware of this demand, which is why we had an extensive series of seminars, lectures and talks at MFS this year, most of which have been centred around circularity, recycling, new materials, traceability and innovations. And we take this matter seriously.

What began as a search for phulkari artisans has evolved into a multi-team startup of designers, artisans, tailors, a tech team, and marketers. Today, we are a strong team shaping Aab Label's growth and success.

Current traceability systems rely largely on paper-based trails. More recently blockchains have been introduced as the solution to record product data in a way that cannot be corrupted. What such systems have in common is that the product information is detached from the real life products. This makes available chain of custody systems prone to frauds.

Besides merino wool, we had to use several materials for the double knit blankets. We also wanted to experiment with this technique. Unfortunately, there aren’t biobased materials available yet at the producer for the filling yarns. The blankets have been developed locally at TextielLab in Tilburg and are produced on demand.

The industry is struggling to recruit as there is a severe labour shortage. There are also labour shortages in the rest of the world but the situation in the UK has been exacerbated by a poorly thought-out post-Brexit migration policy that equates qualifications to skills.

This is the right time to collaborate/create platforms and educate the Western world on the true ways of sustainability and circularity as it has always been our way of life. There is similarity in African and Indian fashion—both coming from rich cultures and traditions, be it in using natural dyes on products or living, working sustainably. It’s past due to owning our designs and creativity directly and creating a sustainable value chain globally.

There is an educational aspect to what we are doing. . There is also a huge amount of green washing and just plain lies on the environmental benefits of products. All scientists know that plant based biodegradable materials are THE only true sustainable solution, the planet has been doing that for over a billion years, this will become clear to people as they learn more about our products.

People fall in love with brands for the good they do in the world, whatever form that might take. Combining these two ideas is powerful, we call it the green bundle. Our unique contribution is next generation bio-based and biodegradable material technologies that are high quality and durable. The materials Steve and his team invented allowed us to create the world’s first biodegradable and durable sneakers with Blueview.

Upon researching, understanding the challenges and current products within outdoor wear and sportswear, we realised that our material could help reduce and solve some of the key environmental issues, like PFCs, PTFE and laminated mixed material. It became a very exciting opportunity.

Our equivalency mapping service allows a company’s Transparency Dashboard to reflect all their conformance and compliance, as long as it is third party audited and credible. Of course, the summary section of each organisation’s individual Dashboard also shows non-auditable good practice to give a full overview of how a company considers its responsibility – this can include awards, social responsibility programmes, additional due diligence work, etc.

Today there is a limited choice of testing methods and those available were developed long before bio-fabrication in industrial quantities existed. We are defining new test methods, which fully measure the properties of our novel products in detail and certify their sustainability.