In luxury, one of the specificities is that we mostly use natural materials, meaning materials that are made from nature. And another obvious specificity is high quality-- the high quality that is inherent to luxury. What ensures the quality of these materials is the health of the natural resources that produce them. Take for example cashmere. Healthy goats have a fine undercoat, and thus produce a fine cashmere. And so for you to understand the challenge of sourcing materials, you have to understand that even though most of our products in luxury are made in Italy, the materials they are made of have come from around the world. Our leathers come from Europe, silk from China, cashmere from Mongolia, wool from New Zealand - so supply chains are global and a bit more complicated.
So, as natural materials, most people don't think of the fashion industry as a heavy industry with pollution, but the fact is that this industry has a tremendous impact on the environment and on people, and one that we must address if we want to keep creating products that we can be proud of for their beauty, their quality, but also their impact on the world. The issues in relation to sourcing materials are the same ones that were presented earlier during this course-- the eight issues in relation to fashion. Except that in the case of raw materials, the impacts are amplified because the supply chains are global.
the problem - the environmental impact.
environmental impact from the raw material extraction, right up to the sale of the product in the store. And what we have identified is that 3/4 of this impact take place at the very beginning of the supply chain. We work with our suppliers to make sure that they have in place actions to reduce their use of energy and thus greenhouse gas emissions. We trace our materials back to make sure that they are absolutely not leading to deforestation. And another thing is about what can we do for reducing the use of chemical fertilisers very upstream in the supply chain. And for this we support organic farming everywhere in the world.
The social impact of fashion is also significant. Remember that this industry employs millions of people around the world, and is unfortunately notorious for exploiting workers and damaging communities. In the luxury industry, we work differently from the fashion and the garment industry because we're so focused on the high end production. So really when it comes to sourcing materials, we don't just buy commodities-- we invest in communities. We go and meet the people that produce our raw materials, because we need to make sure that they are well compensated for what they do. And we support local livelihoods, and we help them apply sustainable, responsible production methods.
It's clear that if the fashion industry wants to keep on its trajectory of growth, it has to completely rethink the way it produces, because we know, we see, that the natural resources are diminishing, and at the same time the fashion industry produces more than 90 million tonnes of waste per year. That's enormous. But we say waste, but when you think about it, it's a huge amount of materials. So with a good amount of sorting, cleaning, and re-engineering, we could use this so-called waste as material again. And this is what we call the circular economy.
Creating a sustainable product begins with making the right choices when sourcing materials, this is where the greatest change can be made in terms of environmental and social impacts.
No comments:
Post a Comment