Future Expo panel talk

Helen, our co-founder very much enjoyed facilitating a panel event at Future Expo in June about home textiles and interior design and how sustainability can be advanced in this area, particularly regarding onboarding new materials. Key takeaways were how the home interiors and textiles area still massively lags behind fashion in terms of exposure and lack of press about the huge amounts of unsustainable practices that occur in this area; the huge amounts of waste that end up in landfill, the toxic chemicals and pollutants that are still used in materials and to ensure compliancy with regulations the use of flame retardants that are disturbingly found at their highest levels in breast milk in the UK. Circular economy strategies are being explored much more widely but there is no infrastructure in place to allow this to happen at scale currently. How can we change how industry works, to move away from this siloed competitive mindset to a more nurturing supportive collaborative environment where large companies support and engage with small, opening up more trading routes to allow them to flourish.
Could more positive stories be created to show the benefits of using sustainable materials and circular economy strategies to BREAK THE CODES, to celebrate the innovative ways that materials are being made, shift cultural attitudes to embrace their provenance through education, and be transparent and communicative about their life cycles to allow the customer to gain more understanding of the whole life of the fabric or product they are purchasing and how the choices they make really can make a difference.
It was great to create more awareness of Interior Design Declares – UK and thankyou to all the brilliant panel, Delyth Fetherston-Dilke, Carole Collet Simone Suss Julian Ellis-Brown. and Future Expo for all the support.

You can watch the video of the talk here; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_jw5nfWNqI