Online Sustainability Innovation Conference 2021
Call for Papers

Based at UCA Farnham, The Centre for Sustainable Design (CfSD) is calling for papers for an online Sustainable Innovation Conference to be held next March and focusing on the fashion industry.

26 May 2020

Based at UCA Farnham, The Centre for Sustainable Design (CfSD) is calling for papers for an online Sustainable Innovation Conference to be held next March and focusing on the fashion industry.

Titled Accelerating Sustainability in Fashion, Clothing, Sportswear & Accessories, it will be a unique forum for new thinking and ideas that address the increasingly urgent issue of sustainability in the fashion and clothing industry.

Clothing waste is increasing worldwide. It is estimated that 60% of all clothing produced ends up in incinerators or landfills within a year of being made. The UK fashion industry sends over 300,00 tonnes of clothing waste to landfill each year and both UK and US consumers throw away over 32kg of clothing per person.

Not only that, but the fashion industry uses 25% of all chemicals produced worldwide, is responsible for 20% of all industrial water pollution, and accounts for 10% of carbon emissions (more than aviation and shipping combined). And, every 1 kg of cloth generates 23 kg of greenhouse gas.

Yet, whilst climate change activism worldwide is bringing these issues to the public conscience, and now so more than ever, youth-driven consumers of fast fashion and brands continue to feed the demand for newness in the age of social media.

All this points to a growing need to accelerate sustainability in the fashion and clothing industry and there are several areas that the CfSD has identified as being key to this happening; a systemic view of the fashion and clothing business to understand the complexity of global value chain networks; the implementation of demand-side and supply-side public policy instruments that drive product sustainability; the emergence and up-scaling of new disruptive eco-innovators; learning from other sectors approaches to product sustainability and circularity; and commercialisation, range-widening and up-scaling of renewable material manufacturing.

With this in mind, the CfSD are calling for conceptual and research-based papers from innovators, thought-leaders, designers, makers, entrepreneurs and scientists in the fashion, clothing and accessories sector to address the challenge of accelerating sustainability in the industry.

Papers should cover sustainability, business models, products, services and/or technology design and development, and commercialisation in the Fashion, Clothing, Sportswear & Accessories sectors.

The online conference will be an opportunity to connect with leaders from business, industry government and academia and will feature new research, methodologies and strategies for tackling the sustainability issue.

SUBMISSION DETAILS 

Email abstracts (up to 500 words) to [email protected] describing your proposed paper by 1 September 2020.

For full details, visit the CfSD events page.