Lewis Perkins, President of the Apparel Impact Institute discusses decarbonizing the fashion industry on the Plantbased Business Hour with Elysabeth Alfano.
Specifically, we discuss
- What is the Apparel Impact Institute? What can the alternative proteins sector learn from A.I.I.
- What is the Fashion Climate Fund and Climate Solutions Portfolio? How are these structures helping to decarbonize the fashion industry?
- What does the industry really need to see happen for a major shift to take place in fashion? Is it always as simple as just lowering prices?
- Do legacy fashion brands fight A.I.I on its mission towards sustainability.
- What kind of impact are you having?
Below is a highlight clip and transcription from our long-form conversation.
Elysabeth: You know one thing that I see that is so impressive about A.I.I. is that you got buy-in early from the entities that are making the emissions. So there’s no industry fighting you, right? There’s not a fashion industry that’s spending millions of dollars on a negative campaign saying that fashion has no footprint?
Lewis Perkins: That’s right, that’s right.
Elysabeth: That’s amazing.
Lewis Perkins: Everybody agrees. You don’t see that. That’s no longer debatable. I think the industry agrees and is getting very transparent about how clothes are being made and most of them are publicly stating that this is what we’re doing about it, you know? This is how we’re going about it. And that is encouraging because we don’t have anyone fighting us other than the system itself which is built to not incentivize the change. So the system has to change and then recognize the role we can play to get every player within this ecosystem of change moving forward and the role they can play.
Elysabeth: But you have so many big players already. You almost have, at critical mass, a tipping point. So, if you’re not a part of A.I.I., you’re doing something wrong. I don’t want to shame anyone but it has a little bit of, ‘bad egg if you aren’t getting on the boat.’ So, I think that’s really incredible.
I call out to the meat industry: JBS, Tyson, Perdue, Maple Leaf and the rest of them to stop fighting the global food systems transformation and get on board and start pouring in the dollars and working on the supply chain and getting credit for it and looking at those sustainability numbers and stop ignoring climate change. So, I love what you’re doing, Lewis.
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