Struggles and Future Prospects of Sustainability in Fashion

I'm Christine Russo, and you're listening to what just happened on Market Scale. Hi, everyone. Welcome Paul Folks Ariano, founder at Circuthon. Welcome Paul. Hi. Great to be here. Listen, Paul, you're very prolific on LinkedIn and have a very strong point of view. So we'll talk about Circathon. And we'll talk about your your voice, how you're using your voice in the sustainability space. You're one of the unique influencers in this space who cover many, many aspects of sustainability as it relates to retail and fashion. In some cases, in many cases, they're they're quite siloed. You have the paper conversation, the packaging conversation, the plastics, the micro it's the manufacturing. But you seem to cover the birth, which is very interesting, and we won't have enough time. But, we're gonna try to do the best we can. So why don't I start by giving you the mic and you can just kind of give us a top line kind of overview of whatever you choose? I got taught sustainability if one can get taught sustainability by a guy called Doctor. Chris Sherman, In twenty twelve, I met Chris. We worked together for several years. He's a doctor in sustainable innovation. I think probably the first doctorate in sustainable design ever that there was when the word says stainability is still a new word. And, Chris used to say to me, do you wanna kill the seals or the butterflies with this decision? And that used to really drive home that every decision we make has an impact on nature. Tell me a few more of your thoughts about that as it relates to fashion. I think fashion was the last industry to kind of go kind of really a weak part of this. Yeah. So I think fashion is under the microscope of all the industries in the world. I think fashion is actually the most under the microscope. In so many different geographies. Why? Because when fashion defense itself, the defense is weak. It's non scientific. It's it's very fluffy. It's kind of like, yeah, but people need to people need retail therapy. Hey. That doesn't work with legislators. That doesn't work with retailers who've got sustainability commitments. Yeah. People do need retail therapy, but they could get that in a number of different ways from fashion. It doesn't need to be a brand new garment made out of oil. So I think fashion needs to really respond in a scientific way, maybe employ some scientists, get some biodiversity experts. And again, some businesses do, but they're very few. And a lot of those people that go in and do that role, they very quickly leave. I had a conversation about fashion apparel retailers and the emergence of what it's called, you know, chief sustainability officer or head of sustainability. And I said, you know, I don't think that that's an effective way to go about it. I think that the mindset has to be built into the entire organization and there has to be sort of if you don't measure it, you can't improve it. Like there has actually be the, you know, non fluff data keeping. If you don't drill it all the way down I mean, all the way down from supply chain, making shipping decisions, to making packaging decisions, to, even work from home or not work from home, if you could say, well, we're gonna choose more work from home hours because it saves on c o two. That's that's like a comprehensive decision making process I'd love your thoughts on how you think the most effective way to go about creating change or moving the needle would be. Yeah. That's such a good point. If you've got forty thousand employees and only for due sustainability, No. What's gonna listen to them? They're not around. There's not enough to spray around. What the financial institutions are doing the big banks and the big four consulting firms, they're training every single employee in sustainability. I mean, I think it's, e y, everybody from every single employee can do a free masters in sustainability. It's paid for by E y because they were like, if we don't get this right, we can't talk to our clients about the future. And and advise them if we don't understand it. So they've got this opportunity. Natwest Bank, one of the the biggest banks in the UK, I was working with University of Edinburgh, seems like a lifetime ago. It was only last year, and we did an online training course for every basically, everyone who was customer facing had an online training with me with a whole pile of other sustainability experts on what it meant, but what it meant for their customers. And I met several of their customers during that process. To talk about what they did and how they work with the bank. What a great example that the bank is doing that. But why? It's a great risk. If their clients don't understand this, their clients have no revenue and they lose their customer and that money. So in a sense. It's it's a great idea, but that I think is, you know, absent from the fashion industry. If I, you know, I can't I don't know a single fashion business or fashion retailer who's training up all of their staff and sustainability at all. How do you feel overall about the state of the state. Like, are you do you wake up depressed? Are you excited? Are people really kind of like embracing this and you're seeing a lot of movement? Where where is your mindset? Yeah. So I think I've been complaining on the wrong issues within fashion. What's worked in packaging or chemicals or pigments or what else? Don't seem to have really worked. The fashion industry is no better today than it was five years ago in terms of use of fossil. And and really fossil is is pretty dangerous. We've gotta move away from fossil, but we don't see that happening really in fashion. We don't see end of life solutions, which are also producing huge emissions. So we have to take a different tack. There's not enough scientists. So what if the new sexy brands say, hey, here's our new chief scientific officer. Here's our biodiversity officer. But these are people that actually have a boardroom position. You know, that has to be the way that things will change. Because we've seen that happen in other industries, we now see retailers having strong chief sustainability offices chief procurement people versed in sustainability, you know, the finance director who has a master's in kind of green finance or something. You know, the these companies are changing. So what I need to be talking about is the makeup of the people working in these businesses, either retrain, and there's a lot of people who've retrained in fashion, and that gives me joy. So I wake up. Very excited. Many people, I know, you know, have retrained and they've studied acroecology or biofabrication or whatever. Then gone back into fashion. I think we've got a couple of years to go yet before I say the you know, the catalyst was there. The fashion industry is now moving in the right way. So I would say to people, don't look at twenty twenty three. If you look at the shelves, if you look at the internet, twenty twenty three, you won't find the things that you should be buying or the systems that you need to buy from. It's not there yet. Twenty twenty five different story. You'll be seeing places you can go that will tell you your carbon, your metrics, will tell you what it means to buy that, you know, piece of clothing that may be you know the two previous owners and where they were and what they did and why they loved it, you know, we'll have all of that, blockchain technology helping us to understand where things come from. That's two years away. Fashion moves quickly. So aside from being a rabble rouser in the space and kind of calling things out for what they are, you are the founder of Circathon. So what is that? Tell us about that. Yes. The Circathon is a consulting firm and very, very focused on, end of life solutions, Circular solutions, which is circuiton is like circular marathon. It's not a sprint. It's a marathon to get to be circular. Most of the business I work with are on a journey, even when they're really what we would call a circular business, they need to improve because they realize there's a long way to go. They are what we say we could be relatively circular to the industry, but there could be a lot more They could reduce a lot more ways, they could reuse a lot more. And we tend to work with billion dollar companies, either in the US or in Europe, little bit in Asia Australia, really setting, really what we call impossible goals for, like, twenty thirty. So what we're going together is creating net zero plans or strategic, circularity plans that say this business will no longer use virgin materials by twenty twenty seven. By twenty thirty, every feedstock that will be used will be second or third generation. And they're really ambitious goals. Did you hear back from Helen at the British retail consortium about that flower issue. It just, I saw that you called them out with respect to, something with flower imports. You recall that? I never hear back from the British retail consortium. They are literally amongst journalists and amongst campaigners, they are literally protecting actually, what they believe is what retailers want yet. But when we meet these retailers individually, and many of them are in our friendship circles, they're people that we work with. We know. They're like, well, yeah, we're doing this. I mean, we're actually doing the opposite to their position. So it is incredibly strange with these big associations, like the British Retail consortium, like raw material organizations that might have a vested interest in cotton or synthetics or whatever it might be. We've seen it again today. The British retail consortium opposed extended producer responsibility. So there's facts that would allow, end of of life processing They've come out in strong opposition, and they've lobbied government, and they've had it delayed till twenty twenty five. We should have had extended produce responsibility across the UK way. This is for packaging. The textile one has been delayed indefinitely. We have no timetable now for extended producer responsibility on textiles in the UK. And we have no idea if it will ever come back on the table again. Truly speechless. Why would someone want to extend that or cancel it? I'm I'm dumbfounded. I'm never dumbfounded. What they've said is it's a cost of living crisis. We would, you know, charge the consumers. What they don't realize, those same consumers are paying the municipality already to to take the trash away. I mean, it's we're paying for that already in our council taxes. So the money goes to the people that pollute. I mean, it literally is. The retailers and the brands have to pay this. And what's bizarre, the brands, and the retailers are have prepared for it. They've literally been preparing for years and years. They've been using compliance consultants. They're all set for it, but suddenly they're like, hey, we have an excuse, the cost of living crisis. Let's use that one again. So associations always say, oh, the shopper can't afford it. That's the problem. Oh, yeah. We're ready. Oh, but the shopper's gonna suffer, and that becomes a kind of light motif in these big organizations response to everything I mean, I read, lobbyists statements the whole time, and then I see government people spouting back the lobbyists. Words and go, okay. Yeah. You've been lopied. Well, that's, yeah, that's your that's why you're rabble rousing over there. I work with a couple of, young entrepreneurs in Milan who are from the fashion and textile industry. But they're now working with AI people looking at on end of life. A company called Must Hat Down in Milan, And they've got this amazing, software as a service product to help fashion brands understand where the garments are, how they can get them back into circulation. And I'm just, like, Okay. Yeah. That's something I never thought about. We need to work on the mentality on the human beings. And I think People in fashion are very creative and creative people can grasp big concepts. What should a fashion education look like? So most of the people that work in fashion, when you talk to them, they either studied fashion design, a lot of people studied textiles. So that's a big degree in in Europe. People go to study textiles or textile design. Again, in Asia, a lot of people study textiles because it's a it's a kind of it's a way to a job. What should that curriculum look like? What should people be learning? That needs to start from day one. Of, you know, university, learning what is the structure of cotton what is the structure of polyester? How do you cut garments to remove waste? I'm having a conversation tomorrow with one of the the big, universities in London, they're doing some interesting stuff on Circularity. I'd like to take that straight into business. Because I saw it. And I was just like, wow. You need to take that straight into business. But vice versa, we need to take the business stuff straight back into universities. Very true and very insightful. And again, I wanna thank you -- Mhmm. -- for coming on what just happened. Yeah. I've been a huge pleasure. The key thing is getting the word out and to the, you know, to a a wide audience. And then thank you so much for you know, keeping me up your audience to talk to as well. They are very grateful as am I.