Some news from the world of fashion this week that we know will be of interest to a lot of you Roots & Shoots fans out there. The H&M Conscious Foundation (a charity set up by the fashion store H&M) has announced that they are running a competition called the Global Change Award to find the best ideas to change the way that clothes are designed, produced, shipped, bought, used or recycled so as to make the process more eco-friendly and sustainable. This could include anything from more eco-friendly materials for clothes (maybe something like Queen Elizabeth II High School’s grow your own clothes scheme which has already won awards in the UK), through ways to make clothes last longer and ways to upcycle and re-use old and discarded clothing (like the Trashion Show run by the American Community School – learn to run your own here). 5 winners of the award will share in a prize fund of €1 million and also get access to expertise from H&M, the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm and global consultancy firm Accenture to help develop their idea further.
We think this is a fantastic idea and it will be great to see what comes out of it. If you have an idea then why not enter? Full details here: https://www.globalchangeaward.com/ – the competition is open for entries up until 31 October 2015. And even if you don’t think you have a world beating idea right now it’s worth keeping an eye on the Global Change website and following the Twitter hashtags #gca2015 and #hmconsciousfoundation to see what ideas other people come up with – you can also vote for your favourites!
On a similar note, while reading about this award we came across Mud Jeans, a Dutch company who will lease you a pair of jeans for a year. After the year is up you get a new pair of jeans through the post and the old pair are sent back to Mud to be re-used, upcycled or recycled – genius!
I love the idea of Mud Jeans!