Today’s clean-tech intellectual property is tomorrow’s oil.– Andy Hannah, CEO of Plextronics
I recently had the opportunity of being part of a wonderful webinar, where we spoke about Green Innovation – what is it, the need for it and how is it affecting the Fashion industry.
Any incremental and ground-breaking innovation in terms of product, processes, business models, and utilization systems for sustainable development, is an integral part of the successful transformation towards a green economy.
For exaMple: Tesla Vehicle Charging System, Vertical Farming, 3D printing, The Smog Free Project: Jewellery Made From Air Pollution and so many more!!
Attention to environmental sustainability represents an essential issue for the companies that, in order to integrate environment into their strategies, are producing specific innovations that have also positive environmental outcomes. WIPO Green is one such organization and imitative doing wonders!!
There is every reason to want to focus on sustainability and energy efficiency in India! The question then is – why is India lagging far behind what is needed and expected in both the innovation and sustainability domains, despite enormous potential and a critical need?
High perceived initial costs, outdated accounting methods, and the complexity of construction projects are identified as main barriers to implementation. These barriers can be counteracted by :
1) increased awareness among consumers and institutional investors,
2) collaboration and knowledge transfer between stakeholders, and
3) a pull-effect of green leaders who communicate the financial and environmental benefits of green projects.
The results support the resource dependence theory and demonstrate the relevance of the external environment on companies.
Sustainable fashion is today a highly debated and increasingly covered topic in media and at seminars worldwide, but, Fast Fashion is the need of every consumer out there. This trend requires the fashion industry to make multiple designs and create new lines even before they have launched their previous ones.
The Fast Fashion industry, brands like Zara, Forever 21 and H & M have a particularly large carbon footprint with its reliance on large geographic production and supply chains, often relying on the nature of fashion which turns itself into a viscous cycle.
Such a huge output puts a strain upon the environment in varying ways. To make just a single T-shirt, for instance, takes 594 gallons of water — as much as one person would drink in two and a half years. The industry as a whole uses 1.3 trillion gallons of water a year for fabric dyeing alone, and it isn’t just using up water; it’s also polluting it.
A particular fashion could take mere hours to spread around the world, while current methods of IP protection often require time-consuming registration.
This unnecessary chain of events could be avoided if fashion designers were granted more substantial intellectual property rights rather than an overall lack of protection. The Law should provide a comprehensive system of protection for rights as well as a means to obtain remedies; yet, the law has consistently fallen short of protection for the most vulnerable in the fashion industry and society.
There is an urgent need to reduce this Domino Effect!
Greenwashing:
Cambridge Dictionary says greenwashing is designed “to make people believe that your company is doing more to protect the environment than it really is.”
Greenwashing is all about misdirection. There are countless companies in various sectors who in the midst of being sustainable market themselves into something they’re not.
How do you combat the negative impact of corporate greenwashing?
The only way is to educate yourself. Avoid misleading labels, hidden trails and irrelevant claims. Part of the solution may be verification. Groups that verify the validity of a company’s sustainability claims could highlight genuinely effective initiatives while outing greenwashers.
Accurate and thoughtful criticism of greenwashers can help too. If nothing else, a culture of skepticism can lead companies to take quantifiable measures to decrease their carbon footprints. The only green businesses that will survive are those that can prove their claims, those that do legitimately take part in sustainable behavior.