By: Ilaria Pasquinelli, Twitter: @ilaria78, international marketing consultant for the textile and fashion industry.
I had the chance to speak at the Green Business conference last week in Istanbul about future market scenarios for the fashion industry. The conference is an event of the Sustainability Academy in Turkey.
Key highlights from the event
Measuring total impact with PwC tool: PwC presented the Total Impact Measurement and Management Tool (TIMM) as a new “language for business” to measure growth and value creation. This tool basically helps businesses identify and measure the positive or negative indirect impact on societies (e.g. employment opportunities or impact on public finances). The TIMM tool takes into account the relationship between business inputs and activities, their outputs and their longer term outcomes and associated impacts. The key impact indicators are: social impact 9changes in well being), environmental impact (natural resources depletion or pollution created), economic impact (employment and economic output and tax impact (tax paid and collected) (see image below).
Better denim production: Çalik Denim is a textile brand of Gap Güneydogu Tekstil and a supplier of leading jeanswear brands like G-Star, Benetton, Esprit, H&M, Diesel, Tommy, M&S among others. The Turkish textile industry exported more than EUR7 bn in 2012 and nearly EUR500 mn of denim fabrics. Dilek Erik, Marketing Manager of Çalik Denim, made of point of sating that the Turkish textile industry has been doing the right thing for many years, but they have never marketed their sustainability initiatives. She mainly referred to Turkish businesses being compliant with European laws and now going beyond legislation adopting as an example, better fibres. The company has developed a GOTS certified organic cotton collection. Further, they have added recycled fibres, BCI cotton and Tencel to their fabric lines.
Better Beauty: L’Oreal, the world leader in beauty products, is highly committed to make its business better. Ariane Thomas, the Head of Strategic Development on Environments and H&S, explained the group’s holistic approach. Having met different sustainability executives of L’Oreal lately it seems clear to me that the company’s culture and the personal authentic commitment to sustainability of its employees is a key element of its success. Since 2007, all raw materials are evaluated according to persistence as well as ecotoxicity and bioaccumulation criteria. From an environmental point of view, the company is mainly focusing on reducing carbon footprint and water usage as well as waste production. Other sustainability achievements and goals can be found in the group’s 2012 sustainability report.
