As Fashion Positive Plus enters its second year, the program of Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute’s Fashion Positive initiative is expanding its global collaboration on circular materials innovation.
During the inaugural year, Plus identified nine high-volume, pre-competitive materials to move toward Cradle to Cradle Certified Gold level in conjunction with 12 materials suppliers. The materials included viscose, Tencel lyocell, cotton reactive dyes, indigo, Cupro, chemically recycled viscose and chemically recycled polyester.
Fashion Positive Plus membership also expanded to include Gap Inc.’s Athleta brand, G-Star Raw and Mara Hoffman. They joined inaugural members Kering, H&M, Stella McCartney, Eileen Fisher, Marks & Spencer and Loomstate.
“We expect the best from our fabrics and we know our customers do, too. That’s why we’re constantly working with our team of internal athletes, FitPros, ambassadors and customers to design performance fabrics, technologies and solutions,” Michele Sizemore, senior vice president of operations for Athleta, said. “By joining the Fashion Positive Plus initiative, we’re able to work alongside industry leading partners to collaboratively identify even more innovative solutions for sustainable and blended fibers. In the end, this helps us drive toward a more closed loop system where we can perpetually circulate our products in a way that reduces waste throughout the entire product lifecycle.”
The nine Plus members reconvened in Copenhagen during this month’s Fashion Summit to set out the group’s roadmap for year two of the collaborative to focus on bringing the first of the pre-competitive materials to the Cradle to Cradle Certified Gold level. The initiative awarded $50,000 to Worn Again, which develops chemical recycling technology to separate blends and create recycled polyester fiber.
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Fashion Positive Plus is a membership collaborative of brands, innovators and suppliers working together toward positive change in the fashion industry through the development of safe, healthy, circular materials that can remain in perpetual cycles of use and reuse.
Annie Gullingsrud, Fashion Positive Plus lead for the Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute, said, “As the Plus collaborative gains momentum, we look forward to accelerating the group’s effort toward verifying commonly used pre-competitive materials according to the Cradle to Cradle Certified product standard and to continuing to expand the Fashion Positive Materials Collection.”
The Fashion Positive program aims to transform fashion one material at a time. Working through the supply chain, it sets out to identify and certify the building blocks of the industry—yarns, dyes, fabrics, zippers, trims and finishing, for example—to create an ongoing collective of “positive” materials for the industry to use in designing products.
The Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute is a non-profit organization with a mission of turning the making of things into a positive force for people, the economy and the planet. It administers the Cradle to Cradle Certified Product Program for assessing and continually improving products based upon five sustainability characteristics–material health, material reuse, renewable energy, water stewardship and social fairness.