Kipas Sponsors Sustainability Talks for Innovation & Idea Sharing
A crucial pillar within the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals is collaboration. To move the apparel business forward to a more sustainable future, brands must be willing to share their advancements with their peers.
The recent Sustainability Talks Istanbul conference provided a platform for this idea exchange. Held on Nov. 25 at Zorlu Center, the event brought together 600 in-person attendees and 3,200 virtual participants to discuss sustainability in the apparel and textile sectors. The event was first held in 2019.
Hosts Turkish Textile and Orbit Consulting worked with Kipas Textiles—the main sponsor of the event—to organize the event. The 39 speakers included Kingpins founder Andrew Olah; Nicholas Propthe, vice president, global denim center at PVH; Calvin Woolley, supplier development manager at Ikea; and Liesl Truscott, director of corporate benchmarking at Textile Exchange.
Throughout the day, keynotes and panels tackled topics including circularity, raw materials, traceability, cleaner production and digitization.
Calvin explained Ikea’s renewable energy goals, among which is having no coal or oil on-site by 2025. Emrah Eşder, vice president sales Middle East and Africa at Archroma, spoke about her company’s impact calculator, which is a single tool for measuring water, electricity and gas consumption of products. And Andrew discussed some of the myths surrounding cotton.
Lenzing was among the sponsors for the event, and our commercial director, Europe, Americas and Turkey Johannes Stefan spoke during the circularity session.
“As Lenzing, we were proud to sponsor the Sustainability Talks event,” said İlkşen Dedeoğlu Demiray, head of business development Turkey, CIS and Africa. “In this way, we had the opportunity to come together with the leading players and valuable members of the fashion and textile industry under the umbrella of sustainability and circularity. “
“We discussed how advancing for the same purpose can have positive effects on our world on a global scale, and we got good results,” she added. “The Turkish textile industry is in a key position for the sustainable fashion industry, both with its own brands and with its exporter identity, and the distances covered in this way are reinforced by such events.”
Kipas has been using 100 percent renewable energy sources since 2019, and the company has a target to be carbon neutral by 2025.