Neonyt on Air, which was held live from January 18-22, 2021, has mainly focussed on numerous panel discussions and interviews on how to encourage more transparency and sustainability in the textile and fashion industry.
The digital community format, Neonyt on Air, discussed the developments and innovations of the sustainable fashion and textile industry.
Transparency in fashion, or in textile supply chains to be precise, has been a topic of conversation for a long time now.
But the events of the past year and the coronavirus crisis have shown us once again that something needs to change in the textile and fashion industry, customers want immediacy, transparency, and authenticity. How that can be achieved was discussed by more than 20 speakers from the sustainability scene during Neonyt on Air, Messe Frankfurt said.
Around 24,000 international followers, including from the worlds of politics, economics, the IT sector, the lifestyle business, and the textile and fashion industry, accessed the Neonyt on Air content more than 120,000 times during the digital week. The future of transparent supply chains was presented by Annika Sauerhoefer, product manager at Made in Green by Oeko-Tex, according to Messe Frankfurt.
“Sustainable supply chains require corporate due diligence: With the Textile Alliance, we support companies in implementing their due diligence obligations. A Due Diligence Act will regulate the requirements clearly and bindingly in the future. And the Green Button shows consumers which companies are already complying with their due diligence obligations,” Anosha Wahidi, head of the sustainable supply chains unit at the Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development, said in a press release by Messe Frankfurt.
Resilient Orchestra by Luxiders Magazine was a sustainable fashion editorial featuring brands from Neonyt and the Fashion Council Germany, which drew attention to the current conditions and is calling for resilience in society. The long financial thread of sustainability was presented by Maleki, which discussed the roles banks and investors can play in the creation of a sustainable future and a balanced investment strategy.
Johannes Fürst, head of the Blue Lab by Drip by Drip; Anurag Gupta, managing director of Usha Yarns, and Gunnar Heller, head of CSR and member compliance at Foursource, discussed about sustainable sourcing at the beginning of the chain. Elisabetta Baronio, sustainability and responsibility manager at Timberland, and Max Gilgenmann, content director of Neonyt, discussed about the Timberland 2030 vision for net positivity. To achieve it, the cult US brand has set itself the goal of having a net positive impact on nature by designing 100 per cent of its products for circularity and making them from natural materials sourced from regenerative agriculture, Messe Frankfurt said in a media statement.
Franziska Dormann, a representative from the Global Organic Textile Standard and Rapha Breyer, spokesperson for textile policy and partnerships at Fairtrade talked about transparency, credibility, and trust in certification. Guaranteeing transparent processes and supply chains, preserving brand credibility and building up consumer trust are the most important and also difficult aspects for certifiers and environmental labels.
Christian Schultze-Wolters, director of blockchain solutions at IBM; Stefan Rennicke, founder and CEO of Kaya&Kato; and Michael Krake, deputy director general at the Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development, talked about driving transparency by using blockchain. The journey that an item of clothing covers before it ends up hanging in our wardrobe and the conditions that it was made under should become more transparent and traceable with the use of blockchain technology.
Svein Rasmussen, world-class windsurfer, future fighter and CEO of Somwr & Starboard and Thimo Schwenzfeier, show director of Neonyt, discussed about the concept of consumption that contributes to protecting the environment, reducing the amount of plastic in the ocean, and ensuring that mangrove trees are planted.
