Queering Mycoremediation will be part of IM-PERMANENT, curated by Josh Riesel and team, hosted by RMIT Industrial Design and Ellis Jones Agency as part of Melbourne Design Week. The opening will be on Thursday May 18 at the Abbotsford Convent. Circularity in fashion and textiles is often over-simplified. The widely shared butterfly diagram made up of separate technical and biological cycles masks the messy, complex, intermingled realities of how we live with clothing and textiles. The biosphere of earth isRead more
Posts filed in: circular economy
more recent thoughts on fashion and sustainability
Below are yet more responses to journalists, edited here for clarity, in addition to posts here, here and here. I can see that my escalating sense of urgency is coming across as frustration, impatience and even terseness. This is not at the journalists as such, but at our collective cognitive dissonance: we claim to know what there is to do and yet we do not do that. In fact often we do things that only further perpetuate the crisis. ReflectingRead more
What we should be talking about
Below is an edited version of my response to a recent interview request on fashion waste. I realise that my PhD on zero waste fashion design (completed in 2012 and conferred in 2013) and to some extent the 2010 New York Times article sometimes put me in a time capsule for people. It’s not a problem but this post aims to give some shape to my current thinking, in a relatively concise post. I hope it helps journalists and studentsRead more
Connections on climate, circularity, plastics and biodiversity
Jasmin Malik Chua is a long-time fashion and sustainability reporter; we first crossed paths when she was writing for the now-defunct Ecouterre. She asked me for some predictions on sustainability for 2019 for Sourcing Journal; the article is now out, and it’s great for having voices from very different parts of the fashion system. Thank you, Jasmin! As always happens, space is a constraint so I’m once again posting my entire response here: Following the reports that came out inRead more
The circularity gap
Reading through the Circularity Gap by Circle Economy, whom I have met with and respect deeply, some quick thoughts. We are – and have been for millennia, albeit with a recent increase in velocity – in the business of slowly replacing non-human biomass with human biomass. See the diagram early in the report that includes biomass extraction and think of human population growth in the same period. Then read this on the declining numbers of non-human vertebrates. Let me repeat:Read more
Timo Rissanen 