-
UP FOR DEBATEEnvironment
A Circle That Isn’t Easily Squared
As the fashion industry’s environmental footprint attracts increasingly negative attention, circular business models are promoting opportunities to sustain growth by decoupling revenue streams from resource use.
In this Up for Debate series, Ken Pucker, former Timberland COO, explains the industry’s turn to circularity and the barriers to its adoption, then researchers and experts in the sector respond.
-
RESPONSEEnvironment
Response: Increasing Environmental and Social Sustainability at the Same Time
The fashion industry could decrease its environmental impact by shifting its sources of revenue from material and energy to labor.
-
RESPONSEEnvironment
Response: Contextualizing the Colonial Climate Crisis in Black and Indigenous Thought
Currently, every predominant aspect of sustainability discourse and practice is white-centered. It’s time to change that.
-
RESPONSEEnvironment
Response: Embracing Regulation and Fighting ‘Corporate Capture’
Funders must examine how to realistically drive measurable progress on sustainability in the fashion industry.
-
RESPONSEEnvironment
Response: Collaborating Can Optimize Circularity’s Benefits
People working within fashion supply chains must collaborate to determine where and how their evolving business models can contribute to circularity.
-
RESPONSEEnvironment
Response: Driving Sustainability From Within Business
Rather than canning the circular-economy concept altogether, business leaders and policy makers should prioritize sufficiency over recycling.
-
RESPONSEEnvironment
Response: Investing in the Transition to a Less Wasteful Future
Opportunities for innovative solutions exist across all areas of the value chain, including design, supply chain technologies, and molecular recycling.
-
RESPONSEEnvironment
Response: Using Industrial Symbiosis to Address Barriers to Circularity
Collaboration is an essential driver for discovering and scaling innovative approaches that can move the fashion industry toward circularity.
-
REJOINDEREnvironment
Further Reflections on Fashion’s Circularity Reckoning
Ken Pucker responds to his readers’ critiques of his Up for Debate article “A Circle That Isn’t Easily Squared” and reiterates his call for a systemic shift in how the fashion industry does business.
Up for Debate: A Circle That Isn’t Easily Squared
As the fashion industry’s environmental footprint attracts increasingly negative attention, circular business models are promoting opportunities to sustain growth by decoupling revenue streams from resource use. While circularity is appealing in theory, discrete, brand-specific initiatives in the fashion industry have no chance to upend its established linear operating system. In this Up for Debate series, Ken Pucker, former Timberland COO, explains the industry’s turn to circularity and the barriers to its adoption in “A Circle That Isn’t Easily Squared,” and researchers and experts in the sector respond. Below, find Pucker’s article, the responses, and Pucker’s rejoinder. Have a perspective of your own you’d like to share? Join the discussion by leaving a comment on Pucker’s piece or any of the other provocative responses.