The sustainability revolution in fashion supply chains

The sustainability revolution in fashion supply chains

In this episode of the McKinsey Global Institute’s Forward Thinking podcast, co-host Janet Bush talks to Edwin Keh, the CEO of the Hong Kong Research Institute of Textiles and Apparel. It was set up in 2006, with the aim of becoming a center of excellence in research and development in the fashion and textiles industry. The institute has won awards for garment recycling and for its work on a yarn that captures carbon dioxide from the air. Keh is also on the faculty at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He has long experience in the retail business, working for Walmart and Donna Karan, among others.

An edited transcript of this episode follows. Subscribe to the series on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Audio


Forward Thinking on the sustainability revolution in textiles and the fashion industry with Edwin Keh

Podcast transcript

Janet Bush (co-host): Michael, supply chains are very much in the news at the moment. During the pandemic and now in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, we have learned quite how vulnerable they can be. But they can also be very long. If you were to rank global supply chains for length, where do you think the fashion and textiles one would sit?

Michael Chui (co-host): My hunch would be it must be one of the longest. The fabric starts its life in a cotton field or even nowadays maybe in a lab. There is dying and processing, and then manufacturing of garments. Cost is such a key consideration in fashion that it tends to take place in low-wage emerging economies. But design may take place in any number of locations. And then everything has
to get to consumers, and they are all over the world. And of course many of these stages aren’t very positive for the environment.

Janet Bush: Yes indeed. Our guest today has been working on supply chains in the retail industry for many years and now at his institute in Hong Kong he has been thinking hard about how to shorten the textiles and fashion supply chain and crucially how to make it more sustainable. They are inventing new materials and reinventing processes.

Michael Chui: Wow. I am very much looking forward to hearing the conversation. Over to you, Janet.

Janet Bush: Welcome, Edwin. I’m so pleased that you could join us today. I just wanted to ask by starting a bit about you, your background. Where did you grow up? What did you study? What were your interests?

Edwin Keh: Thanks for having me. I grew up in Hong Kong. I don’t sound like I’m from Hong Kong because my wife is American, and this accent is for good in-law management. I studied urban design. My undergraduate degree is [in] urban design. And I thought I was going to be a sociologist.

In fact, I was on my way to get my PhD in sociology when I took what I thought was a summer job working for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the [UN]HCR, in one of the refugee camps. And I had one of the most frustrating work experiences, because I was watching people die unnecessarily in refugee camps. And I couldn’t
figure out how to get resources to them. That actually prompted a shift in my thinking.

I went to business school. And that got me down the road to looking at enterprises and supply chains. And I stayed in supply chains for about 30 years.

Janet Bush: So do you regard yourself as primarily a businessman?

Edwin Keh: Accidentally, I think. I was always curious about organizational behavior, organizational structures, and how groups of people organize themselves to get things done in a more efficient manner. And business was a much more efficient way of looking at that rather than not-for-profits, where they don’t have as clear and/or sharp metrics.

But I also took a left turn, if you will. As you mentioned in your introduction, I got to a point in my career in which I stepped off the corporate ladder and decided I wanted to spend more time thinking,
doing more research, and do something different. And so I stepped off to run a research institute and became an academic and a researcher, to find out more about how I screwed up in the last 30 years of my career.

Janet Bush: You say that, but did you enjoy being in business? You were in retail, largely. How did you get into retail? And what was fun about it?

Edwin Keh: I got into retail because I thought it was a fascinating way to learn more about the world. And particularly in the textile, apparel, and fashion industry because for whatever reason, we built this very, very long, globalized supply chain. It is probably one of the most globalized supply chains of any industry in the world.

I’m very curious about how these things work. It fascinated me. And it’s not a very static area. There’s so many changes. There’s technology, science, and all the new trends. And all the social movements that came along during my career. So I found it endlessly exciting.

But I did feel, at some point, that I wanted to understand the causality behind the phenomenon, which is why I stepped off. One of the reasons why I stepped off.

Janet Bush: In a recent interview, you were described as the godfather of Hong Kong’s fashion sustainability industry. And it’s clear that your institute is doing lots of extremely exciting work. But what led you to focus on sustainability, having been in retail and having been so close to the fashion industry?

Edwin Keh: I was trying to figure out what was going on. We did a large survey with stakeholders. And three big domains, three big answers I kept getting over and over again as I talked with people were: they really wanted to solve for sustainability, because that’s something that everybody in every part of the supply chain was asking for, seeking solutions for.

And Industry 4.0. what do we do? We’re going from a labor-intensive to a more technology-intensive industry. How do we respond to that? And then, are there ways in which we can take the materials, the
learnings, the supply chain, and the processes in this industry and use it in other, adjacent industries?

Hospitality and high-performance sports. Elderly care. All those things became interesting domains for us. So those three domains have driven the work of the research center the last ten years. And they
sort of overlap into each other frequently.

Sustainability, for sure, has been something that has caught the imagination and the attention of a lot of stakeholders with our work. I think that’s what we’ve become known for.

Janet Bush: Before we get into the nitty-gritty
of what your institute is doing—the revolution that’s happening in fashion and sustainable materials—how big is the carbon footprint of the fashion industry?

I’ve read very arresting figures from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. Every year, the foundation says, the fashion industry uses enough water to meet the consumption needs of five million people.
The fashion industry is responsible for 10 percent of annual global carbon emissions. And that’s more than all international flights and maritime shipping combined. I would love to get your take on those
figures, and give me some of your own.

Edwin Keh: I think those are all educated guesses,
would be how I look at those. I think they probably are as good as we can approximate today.

The fashion industry is certainly quite water-intensive. The dyeing, the processing, the wet processing that we do for our materials consume a lot of water, pollute a lot of water, and it is probably not the most efficient use of our valuable resources
that we have.

There are some numbers that would indicate that the industry is about five gigatons [of greenhouse gas emissions annually]. Some are higher. That depends on how far back you go into the supply chains—tier two, tier three, types of activities that drive some of this consumption.

Certainly there are other industries that are much bigger contributors to the problem. This is a significant and a high-profile contributor to the challenges we face. Almost all fashion purchases
are discretionary purchases.

None of us will freeze to death this winter if we don’t buy another jacket or something like that. It is something that is much more manageable and controllable. There are other industries that produce
a lot more emissions, but those may be much harder for us to look for alternatives to.

Janet Bush: To a certain extent, you’re pushing on an open door because of the discretionary nature of fashion. And that will depend on how we all collectively, as consumers, change. And I’ll go back to that point. But if you break down that carbon footprint, it seems to be a combination of dirty production, as you mentioned, and waste. So on the dirty production, how is the institute thinking about that aspect of the footprint?

Edwin Keh: For sure, if you look at the manufacturing part of the supply chain, that is where the opportunity is. That is where what type of materials we choose, how we process the
materials, how we manufacture the materials, how we transport the products—that’s where the biggest chunk of any fashion brand supply chain carbon footprint, that’s where that sits.

I mean, we can all change all the light bulbs in the store to LEDs, and it won’t move the needle. On the other hand, if we change something further upstream from there, that’s the opportunity. But I
think, to your point, it’s not only the carbon footprint, it’s also a lot of the other unhealthy things that we produce. The chemical waste. The solid waste. The dirty water, and things that we emit into the air. All those are opportunities for us to think about how we can improve on that.

One way to think about this challenge, or this opportunity, is if we think of our telephones. The telephone we’re using today and the telephone we were using ten years ago is a completely different
piece of instrument. It provides so much more functionality. It connects us. It protects us. It informs us. It is a tool that has changed with the times and with our needs.

If we bought a T-shirt ten years ago and we buy a T-shirt tomorrow, it’s essentially the same thing. This is the heaviest, dumbest system that we carry around with us. And it is passive. We have to take care of these things, our clothes. The other tools that we use take care of us. I think the opportunity is that we haven’t moved and changed. Nor have we progressed with the changing environment and lifestyle requirements.

Janet Bush: So that’s a huge scope to make a big difference.

Edwin Keh: Yes, yes. I think there are. We just haven’t—for all of the modernity that we think of this industry, it’s quite conservative. I remember talking to a brand recently, a luxury brand, and basically they said, “We haven’t changed suppliers for three generations.”

This “we’ve been doing this forever,” they’re very proud of that. And I was thinking, but why wouldn’t you? Why wouldn’t you embrace stuff? There are things that—we certainly have been slow. The opportunities are there.

Janet Bush: Why do you think that the fashion business, in the broader sense, is so conservative?

Edwin Keh: A couple things. Fundamentally, the relationship between the user of fashion products and the fashion brands and designers, if you will, has changed. And the industry is sort of trying to recapture some of its glories of its past.

Once upon a time, say, up to the 1990s, designers dictated to consumers what is beautiful, what the trends and the fashion magazines tell us, what the looks should be. That was a top down-event. Today
it’s a bottom-up event.

It’s a very social, very peer-to-peer type of activity. And yet we still have these illusions that we still have this old industry that we want to somehow preserve.

Maybe it’s the mating calls of dinosaurs or what-have-you. But I think secondly, too, there are some things that work. And we just haven’t figured out how to change with the times, because it has worked good enough. Or it’s profitable enough so that we don’t want to make the big changes. We’re all busy, right? This changing tires on a moving vehicle is hard.

Janet Bush: Just exploring a little bit more the dirty production and the fact that this is a very thirsty industry, I believe that you are trialing, in India, a material that came out of your recycling efforts that is very, very water absorbent. And that it is possible that it might be possible to grow cotton with much less water. Or any water. Could you tell us about that? Because it sounds fascinating.

Edwin Keh: We’re actually on our third large-scale experiment, growing experiment, with this. We’ve been interested in cotton, and cellulose in general, because we want to look for some future solution that is cellulose-based. And perhaps some protein-based solutions, so that it can take the place [of] a lot of the petroleum-based materials that we use today.

In the cellulose experiments, we were messing around with recycling of cellulose. We’d been looking at, What are some high-value outputs that we can create with these recycled materials? And one of the answers is, we functionalized cellulose, recycled cellulose, into a super-absorbent polymer. This is a polymer that absorbs about 30 times its weight in water, and then it releases it. And then it does it again repeatedly.

We looked at this as an opportunity to improve the root health of cotton plants while they’re growing. And we’ve been successful essentially now, to grow cotton without irrigation. Just using this material. It pulls moisture in from the ambient environment and stores it and releases it in the appropriate time, right at the root. And so cotton grows faster. The quality of cotton fiber is better, because the overall plant is healthier.

And the yield improves per acre. Double-digit yield improvement on a per-acre basis. So we’re quite excited about this. Right now we are scaling it up in India to make sure that we get the proportions right.

But we’re also developing the second generation of this material, in which we’re adding nutrients into the polymer so that it can also take the place of fertilizer and things like that. Concurrently, we’re also working on a third generation of this material to do all of that but in a much more efficient manufacturing process.

We’re juggling a couple of balls there. But the whole idea is—places like India, you already see the effects of climate change and extreme climate. A lot of the places that we’re working with have had really, really hot summers. There are some that have very little water. Other places have flooding.

I think going forward, the places where we can grow cotton traditionally may get narrower and narrower. What if we have these types of materials that can help us grow cotton? Grow it faster, because we were working directly with farmers in this project.

Can we get another season out of them? So that they not only grow more cotton and are healthier yields, but can we do it more frequently?

Can we use this material to improve the soil health so that we put some of the nutrients back into the soil? And can we grow cotton in marginal land? Places that in the past just weren’t right to grow cotton? These are all things that we’re trying to work on as quickly as possible. The challenge with this project is that every time we have an experimental question, it takes six months to answer it, because that’s how long it takes to grow cotton.

Janet Bush: The other exciting project is this apron, or this fabric, this T-shirt that “eats” carbon from the air.

Edwin Keh: It’s actually half a project. We’re halfway through it. But Fotografiska, the Swedish museum, heard about it, coincidentally, because we do some work with the H&M Foundation. They got very excited about it. And it’s now a part of their uniform in the restaurant. A very nice restaurant in Stockholm.

We have been functionalizing cotton materials to absorb carbon dioxide. Because we’ve been interested in biodiversity and carbon neutrality as part of our recent research themes. So we developed this functionalized cotton material that absorbs it, and in T-shirt form, it’s about one-third of a tree. A day’s worth of carbon dioxide that is absorbed just in the ambient as you use this shirt.

We were very excited about it. That’s the first part of the experiment. The second part of the experiment that we’re working on right now is a chemical release mechanism. Can we keep the carbon dioxide that we sequester in a solid form? We’re working on some calcium carbonate–based types of solutions.

We’re basically trying to develop a detergent so that as consumers wash this material, it pulls all the carbon dioxide out and keeps it in a solid form. What happened there was that we told the museum, “Yes, we’ve figured out the absorption part. We’re now figuring out the sequestering part.”

They talked to us a little bit more about it. And we said, “Well, one of the mechanisms that we found success in doing the release part is that if you just heat up the T-shirt, then the CO2 gets
released again.”

They got very excited about it. Because they said, “Well, what if we release the CO2 in our greenhouse?” And I say, “Oh, that’s cool.” Because then, there, the plants can use it as part of the photosynthesis process and actually then you have this cool cycle.

They just happened to have, in their basement, a sealed greenhouse where they grow their salads and their herbs. So they have a very elegant little loop. It’s a uniform during the day, and then at night,
they take all the uniforms and they put it in the greenhouse. It gets heated up. The carbon dioxide gets released. The plants use it. And they take the uniforms out in the morning and the cycle goes over again.

We’re very happy about that idea. And we’re looking at solutions like that for sequestering. Can we take CO2 that we produce during the production process and use it as food for plants? So that we can use it in the growing of cotton, let’s say. And so that we sequester the CO2 that we produce? And that stays stable in a cotton form? It’s the beginning of exploration. We’re very excited. We’re looking for different products out of that.

Just so we contextualize this, we’re a small, applied research center. We start about 20 to 30 new projects every year. We have about 50 to 60 ongoing projects. We’ve completed about 200 projects. We have a lot of research going on. And we recently decided that we’re going to put all of our sustainability research in one lab. And we found that we have an inventory of 60 to 70 sustainability-, circularity-, recycling-related projects that we’re building out.

Janet Bush: Of all these projects that you have on the stocks or are planning—without giving away state secrets, which are the ones that excite you the most?

Edwin Keh: One of the things that we have observed is that the best opportunities for making breakthroughs, and for disruptions, are at the extremes of the supply chain. If you get as close as possible to the raw material, you can influence where we start. What do we work on?

And then if you get very close to consumer or post-consumer, at the point of sale, there’s opportunities to work on new business models. We’ve talked about the material side, we have ongoing research. We have a cool hydroponic project.

We were building something called “the world’s shortest supply chain,” where we go from raw material to garment all in—I’m shooting for, like, one 40-foot container, but my team tells me it has to be
two 40-foot containers. Completely discharge-free. Self-sustaining. Enclosed, location-free type of solution where you can grow anywhere and make anywhere. We’re excited about that extreme.

We’re also looking at different types of cellulose source. And the places that we are most excited about are looking at one—agricultural waste. Which there’s a lot of effort around the world on. Also saltwater-based solutions. Anything that we can grow in the oceans, so that we don’t have to compete with food for resources on the land, we think will be a good idea.

Lots of work there. And then on the other extreme, the point-of-sale and the consumer side, we’re looking at new business models. Highly intelligent business models. And new value. Can we sell services instead of products? How do we monetize ideas? How do we engage customers in different ways? And then the extended life of materials and products. How do we build in second use, third use into materials and products that we create?

Those two extremes, and then post-consumer recycling and all that. And building consumption-based economy solutions. Because things that we want to recycle, they are in the wrong parts of the world. They’re in the consuming economies where there are no capabilities to do any type of processing.

The factories are in the manufacturing economies. We have all this material there. Are there ways that we can provide highly intelligent, highly effective, highly automated solutions so that these can be
processed into other, high-value materials so that they can be used again and again? Cool things like that are ongoing.

Janet Bush: When we did our research at MGI on the Bio Revolution, we talked explicitly about innovation being the start of the journey. Then it’s commercialization, then it’s adoption. So it’s interesting that you’re talking about business models. Because that clearly has to be a huge part of your thinking. And obviously is.

How far are we along that journey with some of the innovations that you’ve been talking about? How far have we got to go to get to the commercialization and then the adoption, to the scale that will make a real difference?

Edwin Keh: The nightmare scenario is too little, too late, right? That we have these things, but we don’t get there till 2040 or something like that, by which time we’ve had some irreparable damage to our environment.

One of the things that we’re excited about is a disruption to the innovation model itself. How can we get solutions to the marketplace faster? A couple of principles. A long answer to your short question
is, one, we think that most real-world challenges are multidiscipline.

It’s a science problem. It’s a logistics problem. It’s a business-case problem. And you have to solve all of them for it to have a marketplace. What we’re doing is that instead of building scientific domain expertise, we intentionally put groups of people, groups of researchers from very different domains, together to collaborate on projects together.

We intentionally, in most of our projects, have different stakeholders up and down the supply chain, working together on these solutions so that we take into consideration the manufacturing challenges, the pricing challenges, the end-of-use or distribution challenges in the solution.

Working in quite a multidiscipline approach and trying to solve everything, one of our mantras there is that closure is overrated. And things will be a little bit messy. Just live with it.

The third principle we have there is what we call the software innovation model, which is that we are aiming for 1.0. We want to release 1.0 as quickly as possible. So we have a sense of impatience and a sense of urgency. And we don’t try to have perfection before we roll most of our solutions out. It’s the 1.0. We know that it’s got some bugs. We know we’ll have some patches along the way.

But we want to throw these solutions out in the marketplace as quickly as possible, and we’ll make the fixes and improvements as we scale up. It’s messy. It’s a little bit—you have to be confident that it’s solving the right things. And you have the confidence that if we have these exciting challenges and they are meaningful and useful, that the right people, the right help will come along. People will help us with the right solutions.

It is the conviction that we will get there. Because it’s the right thing to do. Failure is OK. But we expect to be successful. It’s a little bit of a tightrope walk. But you are optimistically impatient, I guess. Or something along that line.

It’s quite a roller-coaster ride for some of our team members. Especially our younger team members. If they’ve got their PhD, they tend to be quite more disciplined. And we say, “Well, throw that out the window. Let’s take some risks.”

Janet Bush: Going back to the consumer, is there a danger that consumers like me will stand in the way because they won’t adopt? Obviously you get to the point where everything is sustainable. Anything that they’re being offered on their online retailer is sustainable.

At the moment, there’s a smattering of dresses and T-shirts that say, “ecologically this” or “sustainable that.” I don’t know whether they are. And I tend to try and choose them if I like them. But it has to be a lot more than that. The scale to reach a tipping point has to be much bigger. How do you see the consumer reacting to all of this?

Edwin Keh: There’s a couple of perspectives that we have on this. You’re right, there is enough consumer education in which there’s aspiration for consumers to say, “I want to be greener in my consumption, in the choices I make.”

But also, on the other hand, there are some consumer inconsistencies. I’m still looking at the price tag, and that drives my behavior. But I think every day that becomes less and less of a challenge. It’s a matter of how do we communicate with our consumers so that we help them make decisions that ultimately give them the utility that they were looking for in their consumption in the first place?

One of the things, as we talked with stakeholders through this pandemic, is quite interesting. I think the pandemic also shaped a lot of consumer behaviors. Before the pandemic, it was quite clear that aesthetics is the most important thing the consumers are looking for. Does this make me look good?

During and after the pandemic, while that is still important, there were additional questions. Because “Does this make me look good?” And “Does this make me feel safe?” also became questions.

“Does this make me feel good?” we thought was quite interesting because the last thing consumers want is to feel guilty about their consumption. I’m buying this, and I’m destroying the world with this consumption. That doesn’t make me feel good.

How do we have enough transparency and disclosure to help consumers say, oh, peace of mind. Here are the social implications of what you are doing. Here are the environmental implications of your choice. It makes you look good. Maybe you should feel good.

Finally, the utility is also around my relationship to my clothes. Are there some functionalities, high-performance characteristics, that keep me safe or make me have more peace of mind in using these products?

We want to support all of these types of changes with consumers. With the brands, what we are saying is, look, once upon a time, this was a challenge with your CSR department. Five years ago, let’s say. Today, this is a conversation we wanted to have with your CFOs.

Because I think there are going to be clearly winners and losers in this. It’s a zero-sum game. We can’t grow the consumption and volume anymore. In fact, we have to shrink our consumption model. We’re using too much resources. We’re selling too many clothes, and we’re making consumers buy too many clothes.

The only way we’re going to grow, successful brands are going to grow, is by taking market share away from the competitors. And the brands that are part of the solution, the brands that are one of the good guys in these types of challenges of sustainability, probably will be the winners.

You have to really be in that right pack. And therefore this is now a survival, and this is now a growth, and this is now a financial challenge. And you need to invest and put money behind making sure that you’re one of the first movers in this trend. That message resonates well with brands.

Consumers, I think, they are not only price-sensitive—they still are—but I think they are also value sensitive now. How does this make me look? How does this make me feel? What utility am I getting out of this? And I think this is where we can give a more complete solution as consumers consume.

Janet Bush: I just wanted to go back to something you said earlier when you were talking about business models. You were talking about exploring what services that you could provide. I didn’t really understand what that had to do with sustainability. And I just wanted you to explain more about your thinking.

Edwin Keh: A great example and a great experiment we’re doing with that is our Garment-to-Garment Recycle System. This is a retail recycling business. The first store opened in 2019. It’s still operating as a standalone, for-profit.

There, what we’re asking consumers to do is bring your old clothes. And then, at the store, we’ll break them down into fibers. We’ll make yarn out of them. And we’ll take the yarns from your old clothes, and we’ll 3-D knit you new clothes.

So there, we are providing a service. We’ll give you new-looking clothes. You’re just bringing the raw material for it. We have been trying to—not successfully so far, but we’ve approached several designers and said, “Why don’t you sell designs? Why do you have to sell products? Come work with us. Help us program these. We’re not artists. You guys are the designers.”

Right now, if you go into our shop, the question we ask is, “V neck or crew neck?” Because those are the only two things we know how to program. But come help us program some better stuff into our 3-D knitting system. And it’s your design, we’ll put your label on it. And you’re selling the design.

So are there digitized solutions, like that, of selling services? I think there’s a lot of effort to figure out leasing and rental and resale. I don’t think anybody has cracked the code on that. But those types of services are important for us to explore.

And then on the other side of that are predictive analytics. How do we get the right clothes in the right style, in the right color, in the right size, to the right store, at a price that consumers are willing to pay so that we end up making less but selling more?

The profit comes from reducing the dead stock and the inventory risk that a lot of brands are faced with because of this dynamic marketplace that we’re in. It’s harder and harder to use regression analysis, which is most of the systems that buyers are using today. You know, what sold last season is what I want to buy next season.

That doesn’t work when the market is shifting so quickly. And that doesn’t work when you’re trying to expand into another new international market or something like that. So we’ve developed some forward-looking tools, instead of regression. Looking for information out of social media and other peer-to-peer communications. And looking at trend directions, and how things flow from one economy to the other economy. So that we can make more accurate manufacturing and logistics decisions. Those we’re fairly excited about.

Janet Bush: We’ve taken up a lot of your time, and I could go on and on. But I just wanted to finish, if that’s OK, with some very quick-fire questions. My first one is, what makes you the most pessimistic?

Edwin Keh: We’ve touched on it, which is too little, too late. We have short attention spans. We tend to focus on something, but not very long. And unfortunately, things like climate change [are] a long slog that will need decades of focused attention. So that’s a concern.

Janet Bush: What makes you most optimistic?

Edwin Keh: I don’t think that humankind will be extinct because of the fashion decisions that we make. We have, so far, as a species, solved every major challenge that has come along our way. And I know we can do this as well. It’s just getting the right people working on the right problems.

Janet Bush: If you didn’t specialize in retail, fashion, innovation, what would you be doing?

Edwin Keh: Well, first of all, I don’t think I’m a specialist at all. I have a very short attention span. I think that I’m in a great place because this job allows me to explore very broadly. But if I were not doing this, I would probably be very excited to work with some of the social challenges that we see around the world today. And some of the economic opportunities. There are just so many things that don’t require a lot of effort but can yield a lot of results for a lot of people.

Janet Bush: That kind of takes us full circle, because you started working in refugee camps. So that’s where your heart lies?

Edwin Keh: One of the things that you don’t want to happen is, you don’t want to turn 60 and then look back and say, oh, I wish I had done that. I wish. And if that happens to be I wish I had climbed Mount Everest, well, you can’t do it—your knees won’t get you there anymore.

I think we all need to optimize in everything that we do, to say, “How am I going to be most happy? How am I going to be most useful when I look back on things that I’ve spent my time on?”

Making sure that we focus on those, the biggest, the most audacious challenges, will be cool. The geek term for it is, make sure that you don’t have regret avoidance regression analysis.

Janet Bush: On that almost impenetrable note, thank you very much, Edwin. It’s been a real blast.

Edwin Keh: Thank you, Janet.

Impact on sustainability and lessons learned

Impact on sustainability and lessons learned

Why did the virus SARS-CoV-2, which caused the COVID-19 pandemic, start infecting people? There is evidence that our interactions with the natural environment are creating perfect conditions for pathogens to move from wild animals to people, as population growth, urbanization and climate change bring us into closer contact with wildlife. Medical News Today looks at the connections between health, sustainability, and the environment, and the lessons we must learn from the pandemic.

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What has COVID-19 has taught us about sustainability and health? Image credit: DAVID GRAY/AFP via Getty Images.

The Paris agreement, signed in 2015, was a global commitment to work toward net-zero emissions and the United Nations’ (U.N.) sustainable development goals.

As many as 192 countries, plus the European Union — a further 27 countries — joined the agreement, which came into force in November 2016. Details for its implementation were finalized in 2018 at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Katowice, Poland, and in 2021 at the U.N. Climate Conference in Glasgow, UK.

Climate change and sustainability were constantly in the news. Despite a few dissenting voices, most experts recognized that people are largely responsible for climate change and that measures must be implemented rapidly to combat climate change.

Then, in December 2019, COVID-19 struck. Suddenly, there was a more urgent concern for governments to deal with. Climate change rapidly became a problem for the future. People were dying now from this new disease.

But what many began to realize was that the two issues were inextricably linked. The population growth that drives climate change also increases the likelihood of disease transfer from animals to humans.

COVID-19 is not the first zoonotic disease — a disease that is naturally transmissible from some animals to humans. The World Health Organization (WHO) records more than 200 such diseases, and unless we react to it in the right way, COVID-19 will not be the last.

“The major determinants of global health and sustainable development are poverty, population, and pollution — all of these are linked to both COVID-19 and the climate crisis.”

Dr. Jagdish Khubchandani, professor of public health, New Mexico State University

The WHO estimates that more than 13 million deaths each year are due to avoidable environmental causes, and it names the climate crisis as “the single biggest health threat facing humanity.” So climate and health must be addressed in parallel.

But how is climate linked to COVID-19? The prevalent theory is that COVID-19 moved to humans from bats via an unknown animal vector that was sold in, or had an association with, a wet market in Wuhan, China. And it is not the first disease to move in this way.

According to Amanda McClelland, senior vice president of Prevent Epidemics at Resolve to Save Lives, a global health organization that aims to prevent cardiovascular disease and epidemics:

“There is a strong link between climate change and infectious disease outbreaks. With greater global connectivity and urbanization, habitat loss, and changing environmental conditions, the potential for novel pathogens to become pandemic threats has significantly increased.”

People are accelerating climate change in many ways — population growth, burning fossil fuels, deforestation, urbanization, and environmental degradation are all adding to the problem. And as populations increase, people need more land, so they move into and use new areas.

They, or their domesticated animals, come into contact with wild animals. Many wild animals carry pathogens: Bats, for example, as well as being prime suspects for COVID-19, harbor several other viruses that cause disease in humans, such as rabies, Ebola, and SARS.

Dr. Kunjana Mavunda, board-certified pediatric pulmonologist and expert in travel medicine and global pandemics, told Medical News Today that “[t]he bat can hold several viruses that can be deadly to humans at the same time and not have a problem.”

However, passed to domestic animals and then to people, pathogens that are harmless to their original host often result in disease. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimate that three in every four emerging diseases spread to humans from animals.

Dr. Mavunda added: “Societies that have markets where different species of wild animals are kept together in crowded conditions with poor hygiene — there is a high risk of the pathogens these animals having being transmitted, mutating and then transmitting to humans.”

And it is in developing countries that these conditions are most likely, as Dr. Khubchandani explained to MNT:

“The demand for resources like food cause greater animal husbandry, higher dependence on animals, and interactions with pests and pets without safety and sanitation. […] In such scenarios, we always notice that emerging infectious diseases originate from developing countries.”

In 2015, all U.N. member states adopted the 17 sustainable development goals. In summary, the goals are that ending poverty, reducing inequality, and driving economic growth must go hand in hand with tackling climate change and working to preserve the natural environment.

But what has been the impact of COVID-19 on these goals?

At the start of the pandemic, widespread lockdowns and a huge reduction in travel led to reductions in emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), the main contributor to climate change. One study reported that in April 2020, global CO2 emissions were 17{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} lower than the mean levels for 2019.

However, emissions climbed rapidly once the early lockdowns ended and economic activity revived. Overall, in 2020, emissions were down by only 6.4{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} for the year, and they are continuing to increase.

And in March 2022, the International Energy Agency reported that, in 2021, global CO2 emissions had rebounded to their highest ever level. The report stated that these emissions, driven by an upsurge in coal use, were “more than offsetting the previous year’s pandemic-induced decline.”

“National and regional lockdowns showed improvements to air quality, water quality, and the return of wild animals into towns and cities, with the reduced traffic and noise. But, and this is a big ‘but,’ all the effort put into working from home and social distancing only had a small impact on the input of CO2 into the atmosphere.”

Dr. Keiron Roberts, lecturer in sustainability and the built environment, School of Civil Engineering and Surveying, University of Portsmouth, United Kingdom

So COVID-19 may have, briefly, helped the fight against climate change, but that effect was short-lived.

As Dr. Roberts explained to MNT: “COVID-19 showed us the scale of change we would need to do to reach net-zero under all the current policies and initiatives, which is massive. COP26 in Glasgow last year, and UNEA 5.2 recently, are keeping the climate agenda alive, but we need to keep working harder to help meet the Paris Climate Agreement.”

The impact of the pandemic has been uneven. In high-income countries, comprehensive vaccination programs have ensured that almost everyone has had access to vaccines. Some high-income countries have vaccinated the vast majority of their population.

However, low- and middle-income countries tell a different story. Many have vaccinated less than 10{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} of their population. If vaccination does not increase in these countries, they will once again be left behind, delaying global recovery and, almost certainly, leading to the evolution of more variants.

Once again, poverty has impacted health. Combating poverty is one of the U.N. Sustainability Goals, and COVID-19 shows us how vital it is that this goal is achieved.

We should not forget the words of Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the WHO:

“No one is safe until everyone is safe.”

As other global concerns, such as the war in Ukraine and the cost of living crisis, come to the forefront, many governments are winding down their efforts to combat and control COVID-19.

But COVID-19 has not gone away — the United Kingdom is still recording around 1,000 deaths each week from COVID-19, and the U.S. more than 500 per day, despite widespread vaccination.

To minimize the chance of future pandemics, we must learn lessons from COVID-19.

“We must think about work, life, society, education in novel ways that help the maximum number of people live a quality life. […] Essentially, we cannot think of just today, but decades in advance about SDGs.”

– Dr. Jagdish Khubchandani

Amanda McLelland echoed these sentiments, noting that “[w]e have an imperative to invest more in critical public health infrastructure that is vital to an effective, coordinated, equitable public health response to emerging outbreak and future zoonotic pandemics.”

She continued:

“While global public health officials have long been sounding the alarm on the link between climate change and an increase in pandemic threats, it is my hope that our work as a society to improve environmental sustainability will also help us minimize the risk of future pandemics as we better understand and acknowledge the delicate relationship between humans, animals, and our shared ecosystem.”

COVID-19 may have distracted attention from sustainability and climate change, but it has highlighted the need to achieve the U.N. sustainable development goals. As attention moves from the pandemic, we must ensure it lands on the global environmental threats that are so inextricably linked to our health.

One lesson from COVID-19 is that countries must work together if goals are to be achieved, and now is the time to apply this lesson to a sustainable future.

Microplastics, Fast Fashion and Saving the Bees: EHS Today’s Sustainability News

Microplastics, Fast Fashion and Saving the Bees: EHS Today’s Sustainability News

It’s tricky to believe it is previously April! We’re possessing a instant in which we simultaneously sense that time is whizzing by and also hardly moving—the way we felt in higher faculty when we eagerly awaited the final bell.

We’re seeking at the thirty day period forward and excited at all the celebrations. In recognition of some impending spiritual vacations, Happy Passover, Easter and Eid Mubarak for individuals who observe them. Listed here in the Excellent Lakes, we also seem ahead to the custom of Dyngus Day. Deliver on the paczki and pierogi!

We’re also searching ahead to celebrating Earth Day. This yr, we’re taking a challenging glance at our routines and day-to-day plan and inquiring ourselves what we can do in another way for the betterment of our planet.

For some, that could necessarily mean strolling or biking alternatively of driving. For other individuals, it could signify cooking a vegetarian dish at home. For all of us, it can mean pausing to enjoy the speculate and bounty Mom Earth delivers us and considering what little and not-so-little improvements we can make to ensure long run generations can have the exact same practical experience.

With that in intellect, we have identified a handful of tales wanting at the human influence on the atmosphere and are motivated by some initiatives to be additional sustainable.

Microplastics Detected in Human Blood

Plastic does not dissolve. As an alternative it gets broken into smaller sized and more compact particles, identified as microplastics. They’ve been observed in water supplies, animals and now—for the initially time—human blood.

New investigate published in the journal Ecosystem Global identified that plastic was in the blood of 17 of 22 study contributors. Far more research is essential, but these conclusions must nevertheless seem alarm bells. Especially since the health effects and implications of this kind of a acquiring are not yet known.

50 {cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} of the blood samples confirmed traces of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic, commonly made use of to make consume bottles. Much more than a 3rd experienced polystyrene (PS), used for disposable foodstuff containers and a lot of other goods. A quarter of the blood samples contained polyethylene, which are employed to make plastic buying baggage.

“This is proof that we have plastics in our system — and we should not,” claimed analyze author Dick Vethaak, an ecotoxicologist at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in the Netherlands, to the Agence France-Presse.

“In which is it likely in your system? Can it be removed? Excreted? Or is it retained in particular organs, accumulating perhaps, or is it even equipped to go the blood-brain barrier?”

The study authors claimed that members could have been exposed to microplastics by way of air, water and foodstuff as very well as by way of solutions, these types of as toothpastes, lip glosses and tattoo ink. They do not know if plastic particles in the bloodstream can be transported to organs.

Browse much more summaries of the results from The Guardian and Smithsonian Magazine.

Europe Usually takes a Swipe at Speedy Manner

The European Fee has proposed some new manner guidelines. Specially, it’s concentrating on the fast style business. As we have previously documented, the vogue market is a major polluter the rapidly trend marketplace is even even worse due to the fact sells clothing that are economical, fashionable and are not created to last—but their plastics-derived supplies are. The energy is element of a larger initiative to make sure that a lot more bodily items that are both produced or imported into the European Union (EU) are far more sustainable.

“It really is time to conclusion the model of ‘take, make, split, and toss away’ that is so dangerous to our world, our health and our economic climate,” explained EU government vice-president Frans Timmermans in a press meeting, in accordance to the German broadcaster Deutsche Welle.

The proposal would established new benchmarks for how long lasting and reusable apparel will need to be and would introduce bans on the destruction of unsold textiles, according to NPR. Corporations would also be essential to involve how sustainable and recyclable a apparel product is on its label.

If the EU does enact new benchmarks, it could signify major alterations for what people wear or how they buy apparel, at least in Europe. But looking at some nicely-recognized speedy manner models are dependent in Europe (cough, cough, Zara, cough, cough H&M), we may see a trickle down influence in the U.S.

It’s possible it’ll include much more gasoline to the world force towards sustainability and bigger specifications. Before this 7 days, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission proposed guidelines demanding firms to disclose greenhouse fuel emissions, notably in its price chain (Scope 3) because that’s where the metaphorical sausage is made.

Read through more about the proposed variations in this article.  

A New Marketing campaign to Help save the Bees

In the recent previous, we have read of honeybees dying in droves simply because of a fungus-virus blend. (You can examine much more about it below.) They’re also struggling with habitat reduction, pesticide use, climate adjust and urbanization. Those people that survive are strained and challenged to locate food and help pollinate our meals offer. (This story about how the almond milk development harms bees prompted us to swap milk possibilities.)

We know how crucial bees are, so we were buzzing with enjoyment when we stumbled upon some information from the city of Appleton, Wis. In 20202, the modest town instituted a No Mow May possibly, exactly where residents kept their garden mowers in the shed for the complete month.

The reason: “Lawns commonly present bad habitat for bees. But if authorized to flower, garden weeds — potentially superior characterized as vegetation other than grass — can give exceptional spring food items for bees emerging from hibernation.”

A study from a nearby college discovered that No Mow Could lawns concluded that No Mow May lawns had five moments the amount of bees and a few periods the bee species than mown parks. The movement is spreading to other communities in Wisconsin and in other states. Not everyone is a enthusiast of lawns with substantial grass and other weeds, but it does feel like an easy way to enable pollinators have a combating likelihood. There is still a lot a lot more we require to do, but we’re a lot more than satisfied to ignore our chores for a great induce.

Go through more listed here.

Climate Change, Greener Fashion and Mining Protections: EHS Today’s Sustainability News

Climate Change, Greener Fashion and Mining Protections: EHS Today’s Sustainability News

The shorter amount of money of sunshine for the duration of the wintertime can give numerous a circumstance of the winter blues, but this 12 months has been specially dark and bleak. The omicron variant resulted in the greatest COVID-19 conditions seen given that the pandemic started in the U.S. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is resulting in a humanitarian disaster with international uncertainty.

The past number of times, we have discovered a lot more sunlight. The change to Daylight Conserving Time attracts in close proximity to, and indications of spring are certain to follow. That, in addition the outpouring of guidance for Ukraine—from governments, nonprofits and private companies—is giving us hope that when everybody will come together to share sources and lead insights, that world-wide progress can be created.

We hope that this cooperation will spur other progress, specifically in climate improve, which is even worse than expected. Below are some environmental headlines that have caught our awareness of late.

Local weather Change is Even worse than Envisioned

A new scientific report features the most in-depth seem nonetheless at the threats posed by international warming—and it isn’t fantastic.

The report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Weather Adjust, a human body of industry experts convened by the United Nations, concludes that nations aren’t performing approximately sufficient to guard our lands from the results already observed by climate modify, enable alone what is in shop as the world proceeds to warm.

“With truth upon simple fact, this report reveals how people and the world are having clobbered by local weather alter,” reported U.N. Secretary Typical António Guterres.

It is challenging to even go through a summary of the report from The New York Times and see pics of devastation:

“If world wide warming reaches 1.5 degrees Celsius — as is now very likely inside of the future number of many years — around 8 per cent of the world’s farmland could become unsuitable for increasing food items, the authors wrote. Coral reefs, which buffer coastlines versus storms and maintain fisheries for hundreds of thousands of persons, will face extra frequent bleaching from ocean warmth waves and decrease by 70 to 90 per cent. The selection of people today all over the world uncovered to extreme coastal flooding could boost by more than a single-fifth without having new protections.

“At 2 degrees Celsius of warming, concerning 800 million and 3 billion men and women globally could facial area chronic water shortage simply because of drought, including far more than just one-third of the populace in southern Europe. Crop yields and fish harvests in quite a few spots could start out declining. An more 1.4 million youngsters in Africa could encounter significant malnutrition, stunting their progress.

“At 3 degrees of warming, the risk of excessive weather conditions occasions could maximize fivefold by century’s end. Flooding from sea-level increase and heavier rainstorms could cause four occasions as considerably economic damage globally as they do now. As many as 29{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} of regarded plant and animal species on land could encounter a large chance of extinction.”

Weather improve motion was wanted yesterday. We must examine how we do organization and reside these days and what actions must we get for a long run that can mitigate some effects of local weather adjust.

Read through the summary article from The New York Instances here and a further on important takeaways from the U.N. report below.

Trend, But Make it Sustainable

New York has manner week and the Garment District, but proposed laws would also make it sustainable.

The Fashion Sustainability and Social Accountability Act is at present in committee in the New York Condition Senate. If passed, New York would be the to start with condition to need clothing companies with much more than $100 million in annual international revenue that do organization in the point out to disclose their climate and social impacts, Bloomberg reviews. Corporations would also have to cut down greenhouse gas emissions and energy usage across the offer chains.

That’s substantial due to the fact the marketplace is not at all eco-friendly. For case in point, it usually takes about 1,800 gallons of h2o to develop more than enough cotton to develop one particular pair of denims. The cotton was probably sprayed with pesticides, which could direct to operate off in local water resources. The fiber might be weaved, dyed, slash and sewn in nations around the world by staff in unsafe situations earning unfair wages. The remaining product is transported on a transport container halfway throughout the entire world and then pushed throughout the region to your area store.

Those jeans may possibly or might not get worn, donated to a community thrift keep or get tossed in a landfill. They might also find their way into the 7.5 million lbs of made use of dresses that end up in a Ghana industry each and every week. Or, as is a exercise with unsold luxury products, burned or normally ruined to protect the brand’s impression.

It is no speculate that the United Nations estimates that the style sector accounts for up to 10{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} of International greenhouse gasoline emissions.

Go through extra about the proposed legislation listed here.

Guarding People today and Natural Means

Chile is reconsidering its upcoming. For the earlier several months, 155 delegates are drafting a new structure, just one that reexamines its establish, form of authorities and romantic relationship to character.

And later on this thirty day period, the nation will have a new president, Gabriel Boric, who is also targeted on the ecosystem and citizens. “To destroy the world is to wipe out ourselves,” he claimed in a speech to supporters just after his victory. “We really don’t want more sacrifice zones, we do not want tasks that destroy our country, damage communities.”

This could direct to sweeping change in the South American state, identified for its large shorelines and abundant reserves of copper and lithium—essential components of batteries, specially for electrical autos. Authorities are hopeful this consideration could help mitigate the social and environmental harms of mining. The new structure could offer better protection of all-natural means, the ecosystems and animals they assist and Indigenous people today whose way of daily life could be impacted by mining.

Chile’s conclusions could also have an affect on the worldwide battery and electrical auto market. Producers, confronted with supplies shortages, could devote in battery developments, this sort of as extended battery lifetimes. The offer chain could develop reuse marketplaces and build a additional robust recycling infrastructure that could decrease the need for new raw minerals in the to start with put.

It’s a as soon as-in-a-life time option for Chile to rechart its program to appropriate previous wrongs and build a a lot more sustainable and equitable future for all. “[The delegates] have large hopes that the system that created this inequality in Chile is likely to change,” claimed Viviana Herrera, interim Latin The usa plan coordinator for the nonprofit MiningWatch Canada, to Grist.

Read the full story listed here.