How Can Fashion Become Truly Circular? | BoF VOICES 2021
The Business of Fashion Podcast
The Business of Fashion
4.6 • 770 Ratings
🗓️ 25 February 2022
⏱️ 20 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
“The way we make and use things accounts for 45 percent of greenhouse gases and 90 percent of biodiversity loss,” said Dame Ellen MacArthur at BoF VOICES 2021.
In this conversation with BoF’s Sarah Kent, MacArthur lays out a vision for an alternate “circular” economy where the lifecycle of garments is extended through better design, including the use of more resilient, recyclable materials, and using systems throughout the manufacturing and sales process to facilitate items’ repair, reuse, and eventual transformation into something new.
But this kind of systemic change will require a collective and coordinated push from suppliers, designers, brands and retailers across fashion’s value chain.
“We need to work together to make this happen. You need the entire value chain in the room,” said MacArthur, adding that though such comprehensive change is a challenge, it's also an opportunity. Circular business models, including resale and rental, are on track to become a $700 billion market representing 23 percent of the fashion industry by 2030.
“Business as usual doesn't work,” said MacArthur. “It's not the solution.”
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, this is Imran Ahmed, founder and CEO of the Business of Fashion. |
| 0:08.3 | Welcome to the BOF podcast. It's Friday, February 25th. |
| 0:12.8 | One of the key and most important changes that the fashion industry will have to make in the coming years, |
| 0:18.9 | if we're going to truly reduce the impact of fashion on |
| 0:22.4 | the planet, is to become truly circular. In 2005, Dame Ellen MacArthur made history on the |
| 0:30.0 | open seas by becoming the fastest person to ever sail solo nonstop around the world in just over 70 days. Two years later, she came to BOF Voices |
| 0:40.9 | with a call to action for our industry to do just that, to become more circular. And at BOF Voices |
| 0:47.5 | 2021, Ellen MacArthur came back to Voices to launch the new book from her foundation, Circular Design for Fashion. |
| 0:55.7 | The book aims to inspire designers to adopt circular design in their day-to-day work. |
| 1:00.8 | And this week on the B-O-F podcast will get Ellen's honest take on how fashion is doing on its |
| 1:06.2 | journey towards circularity and to learn why good design is circular design. Here's Dame Ellen MacArthur |
| 1:13.2 | in conversation with B-O-F Sarah Kent at B-O-F Voices 2021. The Ellen McCarthy Foundation is launching |
| 1:20.6 | its book on circular design and you gave a little teaser in that video of what circularity really |
| 1:26.0 | means, but I've been covering sustainability in this industry |
| 1:28.9 | for some time now, and I know we throw around these very big words that mean very big things, |
| 1:35.1 | and we don't drill into what it really means, and that's important that we understand what we're |
| 1:39.7 | talking about. So I wondered if you could just lay down what fashion is really aiming for here. |
| 1:45.0 | The circular design is about three principles. |
| 1:48.0 | The first principle is to eliminate waste and pollution through design. |
| 1:52.0 | The second is to circulate products and materials for as long as possible. |
| 1:56.0 | And then the third is to regenerate natural systems. |
| 1:59.0 | If you do that all running on renewable energy, |
... |
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