Sustainability Salon Series: Changing the Rules of the Game

As leaders in sustainable fashion innovation, with key products such as our hanger lines, we at Arch & Hook aim to bring people together and talk about sustainability. For “Changing the Rules of the Game” we created a panel of experts from various backgrounds, who have challenged the status quo and offer insightful solutions in their fields and a great discourse on the current challenges we are facing in sustainability. We were also thrilled to have the inspiring Kerry Bannigan from Conscious Fashion Campaign as a moderator who led the conversation masterfully and posed vital questions to our guests focusing on how they solve business challenges on a daily basis, where their industries are heading,  but also how they have evolved in the current COVID-19 crisis. And so, the first session was kicked off by Arch & Hook’s CCO, Gertjan Meijer.

Corinna Williams co-founded Celsious, a premium eco-friendly garment care provider and New York’s first concept laundromat, together with her sister Theresa Williams in 2017. The sisters consider themselves disruptors in the laundry industry by making laundry day an enjoyable experience rather than a boring chore with their concept of laundromat café, and educational ethos of laundry day. But that’s not all, the sisters also aim to make laundry day an eco-friendly and planet-friendly experience. Celsious works with the most energy-efficient equipment that is available in the laundry market, providing natural garment care alternatives to some of the conventional detergents.

During the session, Corinna explained the methods behind Celsious moving towards zero waste, and as successful as that has been,  in the wake of Covid-19, new obstacles have come up in navigating to apply these practices. More so, within the entirety of the laundry industry, Corinna shared, sustainability remains an uncoordinated challenge for its businesses with a lack of “fast enough” and coordinated innovation of its equipment, utilities, and even consumer education.

Our second panelist, Michael Waas, Global VP and Brand Partnerships at TerraCycle, a 15-year-old for-profit but purpose-driven organisation focusing on eliminating the idea of waste, presented the fascinating story of how TerraCycle has changed the rules of the game in recycling, by eliminating waste in three ways:

1. Strive to make everything recyclable: run recycling programs and have pioneer solutions to recycle some of the world’s challenging waste streams. Anything you think might not be recyclable such as cigarette buds, TerraCycle wants to provide a solution to that issue.
2. Work with product manufacturers to integrate those waste streams into their production supply line. That allows TerraCycle to help companies replace virgin or partially recycled material with their waste material so that companies can keep those materials in the value chain longer.
3. Through their new platform “Loop”, which is based on a simple and old concept: it’s better to reuse packaging than to use disposable packaging. The platform was launched a year ago in Paris and New York but has already expanded globally.

Our third panelist, Wyke Potjer, is a Dutch Journalist, Partner and Content Manager at hetkanwel.nl , (meaning  “we can do it”), an online platform providing consumer-focused sustainable living content, also called green fair and fun living. This initiative is to show how much fun sustainable living actually can be, and that it does not have to be complicated or hard. Currently, the platform is in Dutch but an English version is in the works. Hetkanwel.nl is an award-winning website in the Netherlands, and they are also launching a book later this year, which Wyke is co-writing.

(TIP: Use Google Chrome browser and translate the website to English in just one right-click)

Throughout the session, Wyke shared how the platform provides its readers daily content about tips and advise on how to live a more sustainable life – how can you greenify your life. Additionally, Wyke also shared how can we remain safe from Covid-19 with regards to food, and what can we do with all this uptick in trash from food/groceries.

All the panelists shared insights on how businesses can implement sustainable practices and operations, and how you weigh extra costs against business gains and if you’d wish to hear about this debate and the speakers, then listen to the full recording here.

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Do you want to be part of the next session of the Sustainability Salon Series? Then reach out to events@archandhook.com and tell us your idea, we’d love to hear from you.

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