In 1991, they turned down a request from the Ethiopian government to buy a large tannery in that country in order to help it develop by adding more value locally. The decision not to do so was probably their biggest error. They were financially strong and had good technical staff with some living permanently in Ethiopia to help the local tanners with early-stage processing

We decided to set up a company in 2016 in Shanghai (where we lived at that time) to sell yarns and fabrics with kapok to test it in the market. In fact, we found some kapok plantations in Mainland China too. However, we realised it was better to source from Indonesia because the quality of the fibre was better and also the density of the trees is higher and therefore there is more supply

We have industrialised a process that was manually intensive with no social standards. Flocus is changing all that by applying standards for security, safety (also in harvesting) etc and creating volumes never available before with a stable fibre standard quality, and this is what differentiates us from anybody else selling kapok in the market. We not only create the demand for the fibre by using it to make filling, yarns, fabrics and nonwovens, we also plant trees and help local communities.

Today, more than half of green claims are misleading or unverifiable—among them, climate neutrality claims, which are a common form of greenwashing. This directive puts an end to these claims. However, it relies heavily on market surveillance, which we know is lacking, and leaves a lot to the Green Claims Directive, which is unlikely to be adopted under the current legislature. This is good progress, but legislators need to step up regulatory action.

We will step away from throwaway culture, make marketing more transparent and fight premature obsolescence of goods. People will be able to choose products that are more durable, repairable and sustainable thanks to reliable labels and advertisements. Most importantly, companies can no longer trick people by saying that plastic bottles are good because the company planted trees somewhere—or say that something is sustainable without explaining how. This is a big win for all of us!

There is a brilliant opportunity to develop meaningful sustainable business models and community engagement models which works towards changing consumer behaviour, as this remains a key issue within the fashion and garment sector and raises serious environmental concerns.

TSWI has developed the Swedish Wool Standard, and it is a classification system for Swedish wool. The standard simplifies the process of selling and purchasing high-quality Swedish wool, opening up completely new market possibilities for wool rearers. The process of wool classification entails a wool broker procuring wool from diverse farms, meticulously assessing the properties of the raw wool, and classifying it into distinct quality types and grades.

Plants are these awesome, dominant pieces of biology that solve the same problems humans solve to survive. But they do it in totally different ways... We took cotton to a truly alien realm, where things are happening that have never happened to its biology before.

Its (the technology's) unparalleled environmental footprint and unique functionality will establish the fibre among the top choices on a global scale for the many and not for the few, across several categories in home textile and apparel segments, while helping the textile industry to accelerate the transition to net zero.

We are now at a level of 2,000 tonnes of textile waste per year and are planning to scale up to 50,000 tonnes in a few years’ time. We work with partners such as sorters and industrial laundries to close the loop for end-of-life textiles. That could be bed linen from hotels, hospitals or household waste.

At the moment, there is no sign of a reduction in the amount of waste in large-scale production. In the long term, if the EU is able to regulate the industry smartly enough outside the EU as well, then new, more circular supply chains will be created, and we can also hope for a reduction in waste generation. But it will take many more years.

If in the beginning—12 years ago—many people considered it something shameful to buy clothes at a second-hand store, but today in our stores we see both young people and the adult generation. Second-hand clothing is no longer seen as clothing only for the poor, but as an opportunity to purchase something unique, vintage, or even branded at a good price.

After 5–7 years, we realised that we needed to change the perspective, and that our main competitors were not humanitarian organisations giving away free clothes, but Zara, H&M and others. So, we decided to offer to our clients the same experience of shopping that they have in these stores.

Resilience is a recurring theme. It has become a critical success factor—not just for businesses, but for individuals and communities. This is where home and contract textiles come in: they play a transformative role in creating spaces that promote well-being, enhance productivity, and support mental health.

In many ways these are expected in a country which is in the early stages of industrialisation. But the feedback that we got from the workers presented a very different picture (compared to what employers had to say).

To be able to prove that cotton is a climate-friendly crop, there needs to be accurate data. Since it is difficult and expensive to get this data, this will indeed play into the hands of cotton critics. Therefore, it is important that the industry works towards more accurate measurements of the impact of climate on cotton farmers, the GHG emissions in cotton farming, and how to lower these emissions.

I have difficulty purchasing large quantities of textiles from Africa. I refuse to import, and it directly impacts my production capacities as well as my costs. It is not normal. Africa should have the capacity to industrially produce textiles. It is difficult to make ready-to-wear collections with these constraints. Our fashion remains reserved for a minority because of production costs.

It is true that we saw the organic cotton eco-system facing serious problems over the years and that is one of the reasons of the evolution of Oeko-Tex Organic Cotton Certificate. Globally we have observed in recent times that global brands have been facing problem with organic certified cotton due to some issues at production sites. There are various reasons which could be responsible in varying magnitudes for such problems.

Smallholder farmer groups need the best possible support to adapt to climate change. Now we see great market potential for regenerative cotton. We expect that there will be more regenerative standards and origins on different and unharmonised levels. We want to use this momentum to offer a reliable alternative and thereby to benefit the producers as well as the brands.

Each sector has incredible (and sometimes overlapping) tools to both implement the transition and accelerate it. We need deep knowledge of the extent of problems and the best practices for solutions from the social sector, and to also scale the innovative practices of social entrepreneurs. We need the private sector to give us a real understanding of the challenges around implementation and the bottomline.