GREEN IS THE NEW BLACK

How fashion is turning eco-friendly.

THE APPAREL industry accounts for 10 per cent of global carbon emissions and is the second most polluting industry in the world after fossil fuels. It’s a three-trillion-dollar global business so it’s probably no surprise.

Luckily, there are innovative brands who’ve heard the planet’s cry for help and are taking measures to ensure its survival, while keeping it in fashion.

Adidas has started working and Parley For The Oceans, an organisation dedicated to reducing plastic waste in oceans. Together, they aim to transform ocean plastic pollution into high performance sportswear. Literally, spinning the problem into a solution, and the threat into a thread.

Adidas have created Ultra-BOOST Uncaged Parley. The shoe’s upper is made of 95 per cent ocean plastic with the remainder of the shoe largely made of recycled materials. Only 7,000 pairs have gone on sale, however, Adidas has ocean-sized plans for new designs in the near- future pledging: “We will make one million pairs of shoes using Parley Ocean Plastic in 2017. Our ultimate ambition is to eliminate virgin plastic from our supply chain.”

Founder of Parley For The Oceans, Cyrill Gutsch says, “Our strategy to end plastic pollution is to recognise the problem and accept that plastic is a design failure. We’ve created something that we call Parley Ocean Plastic, and a range of materials that are based on all that trash that we find in the sea and mixed with other recycled material.”

You can help by thinking about the following when you next go clothes shopping: • Make ethical and informed choices. • Embrace natural fibres and limit synthetics. • Support local makers. • Mend, patch, tailor and breathe new life into old styles. • Donate to those who have less. • Recycle your waste in the correct way so it doesn’t end up in our oceans.

Our strategy to end plastic

pollution is to recognise the problem and accept that plastic is a design failure.