By Leon Gettler, Talking Business >>

ONE OF THE BIG ISSUES in the rag trade is the significant waste generated by online fashion returns, with many perfectly usable garments ending up in landfill.

About 100 billion garments are produced globally each year, with 33 percent going to landfill within the first year of purchase.

In Australia every year, the average person consumers 27kg of textiles and 23kg of that ends up in landfill each year.

This is a shocking statistic and VictoryMax wants to be part of the solution. 

Victory Max, offers a digital answer with their virtual fitting rooms. Done in conjunction with Austrian technology company Reactive Reality, this free feature enables customers to create a virtual mannequin, in their proportions, in order to mix and match pieces to find an outfit they love.

Victory Max founder Victoria Matterson said the technology gave customers more insights into their purchases. It also provides them with greater assurance the pieces they buy will suit them and be worn time and time again. 

Creating the virtual fitting room

How does the virtual fitting room work? It takes a 2D or 3D image of the garment. It is photographed on a ghost mannequin.

The customer puts in their measurements and the image is overlaid on the person to show where it fits, where it might be too tight, where it might be too loose. The mannequin is made in proportion to the customer’s measurements.

The mannequin is based completely on the customer.

She said this would also reduce the number of garments going into landfill.

“Depending on the website, between 30 and 40 percent of online purchases get returned,” Ms Matterson told Talking Business.

Ms Matterson said she had run a focus group with her peers which told her that when they buy clothes on line, they buy in two or three sizes and send back the ones that don’t fit.

“The issue with that is often with the ones that don’t fit on some websites, they automatically go into landfill because it is too difficult to put them back into the chain.to be re-sold because they have to be dry-cleaned again, and have to be re-labelled. So from that point of view there is significant waste there,” she said.

Customers take to virtual fittings

The virtual fitting room has only been operating for the last few weeks.

She said customers love it.

“They’re liking the ease of it. It takes less than a minute to set up a profile and then it just gets saved on your browser,” Ms Matterson  said.

She said a lot of her male friends want her to start stocking male fashion items as they don’t want to go into a store. She says that will come in time. It’s another project for the company which was only set up in 2019 before the COVID madness.

She said her company focuses on Australian designers and brands. These include the Ostara Collection. Luna + Sun, Re-Love Me, Fit Bird, and Styelle Swim in clothing. There are also items in jewellery and beauty

“That ties in with our focus on increased sustainability and ethical production because that’s absolutely critical,” Ms Matterson said.

“We don’t want anything that comes from a sweat shop overseas where we are not sure how the labour has been treated, where we are not sure people are getting their workplace entitlements” she said.

www.victorymax.com.au

www.leongettler.com

Hear the complete interview and catch up with other topical business news on Leon Gettler’s Talking Business podcast, released every Friday at www.acast.com/talkingbusiness

https://play.acast.com/s/talkingbusiness/talking-business12-interview-with-victoria-matterson-from-vi

ends

By Leon Gettler >>

NUMEROUS companies are now looking at managing their carbon footprint. But how do they manage the bureaucracy and get their workforce involved?

Trace provides the answers, tracking companies’ carbon footprints and helping them manage it over time

Trace is a software platform designed for small to medium enterprises who want to become carbon neutral. 

Cat Long, the CEO of Trace, said the process was designed to be as streamlined as possible as she and co-founder, Joanna Auburn, have worked across sustainability in previous corporate jobs and found that the process to measure a business’s carbon footprint generally involves hundreds of spreadsheets. It also requires some sort of expertise, or at least a knowledge of, all the jargon, which becomes a real barrier for action.

“So for small businesses who just want to do the right thing and be shown to be taking climate action, there’s really a lack of solutions out there for them,” Ms Long told Talking Business. 

“We built Trace as a way to remove those barriers.”

DATA TRACED AND TRACKED

The data is gathered on a digital platform, measuring for example the size of the workforce, how they get to work, the office building, how much waste it produces and the suppliers.

The information is then pumped through Trace’s carbon emissions model which then gives a carbon footprint for that business. This is done free of charge.

This gives the business an idea of what their emissions look like and where the biggest opportunities for action are. These could include managing travel times, which will probably become an issue from 2022 onwards, or powering the electricity with renewables and solar.

Anything they can’t reduce, they can offset with carbon credits which Trace sources on their behalf, finding climate projects from all over the world. The companies can use these carbon credits to ensure their business is classified as carbon neutral.

MAJOR COMPANIES PLEDGE TO CHANGE

Trace has been doing a lot of work with companies like Deloitte, Lend Lease and the activist beverage brand Spark, as well as other companies.

“One thing in common is all these companies are taking action because they believe it’s the right thing to do, not because it’s some mandatory expectation from the government or from shareholders,” Ms Long said.

“What that means is they don’t want to become carbon neutral in silence. They want to involve their employees, tell their customers and make it a really engaging rewarding process.

“We work with these businesses to help them not only become carbon neutral but amplify that impact by sharing it with their employees and their staff through marketing assets, stories, we can run carbon footprint quizzes with their employees.”

CARBON MITIGATION OPTIONS CHANGING

Ms Long said most of Trace’s clients have somewhere between 20 and 200 staff. Before COVID, the opportunity for these businesses to take action was within their offices with green energy for electricity or reducing waste.

Since COVID, workforces have gone ‘remote’ and travel is largely non-existent, so the opportunity lies in people’s home offices, helping people understand what they can be doing at home to reduce their personal carbon footprint.

Other than that, the companies can engage in waste reduction and ethical supply chains.

She said the carbon credit market was big business with estimates it would grow 15-fold by 2030, taking it to a $US50 billion market.

Ms Long said Australia could play a significant role in that market with carbon farming, creating an enormous financial incentive for farmers to put in more sustainable practices. 

www.our-trace.com

www.leongettler.com 

Hear the complete interview and catch up with other topical business news on Leon Gettler’s Talking Business podcast, released every Friday at www.acast.com/talkingbusiness.

https://play.acast.com/s/talkingbusiness/talking-business31-interview-with-cat-long-ceo-of-trace

ENDS

A GLOBAL COALITION of businesspeople and academics has released its ground-breaking Real Carbon Price Index to track the progress the world is making towards reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

“Our ambition is to make the Real Carbon Price Index the global benchmark for carbon pricing. This will shine a spotlight on global decarbonisation efforts, showing whether real action is being taken, and who is taking it,” Sydney based start-up C2Zero founder and CEO Roger Cohen said.

Dr Cohen said the High Level Commission on Carbon Pricing has established that if polluters paid US$50-$100 per tonne for their carbon emissions by 2030, this would be enough to trigger action through direct emissions reduction plus innovation, which would allow the goals of the Paris Agreement to be met.

“If the price is low, as it currently is, there is little reason for polluters to take action. Our Index shows the blunt truth: greenhouse gas emissions are still far too cheap,” Dr Cohen said.

Ummul Ruthbah, senior research fellow with Monash Centre for Financial Studies (MCFS), said the Real Carbon Price Index shows the cost of carbon emissions globally has risen from zero in the 1980s to the current level of just US$4.42 per tonne. 

“This is far below where it needs to be in order to force both individual companies and entire business sectors with heavy carbon emissions to meaningfully reduce their pollution levels," Dr Ruthbah said. "In fact, the Index reveals that about 75 percent of carbon emitters are paying absolutely nothing.

“While accounting for 1 percent of global emissions, Australia is not even included in the Real Carbon Price Index as it does not have a carbon emissions trading scheme, although it does have an offsets trading system administered by the Clean Energy Regulator,” Dr Ruthbah said.

Fellow MCFS researcher, Bei Cui said, “This inaction stands against the damage done by emitting greenhouse gases.

"A recent European study found that the social cost of emitting one tonne of CO2 could actually be well above $3000 if we don’t take action,” Dr Cui said.

He said some economies, including the EU, US, and China, are making polluters pay for their greenhouse gases, yet most countries, including Australia, have placed very little or no price on greenhouse gas emissions.

“The Real Carbon Price Index lets everyone see how seriously the world is taking climate change. It scrutinises which countries or regions are paying their way or contributing to addressing this crisis,” SparkChange head of research, Jan Ahrens said. SparkChange is a provider of specialist carbon investment products and data.

“The Index can be used to highlight the differences between regions and countries, show how historical decisions (like Brexit) affect carbon pricing and provide guidance for policy makers when setting carbon prices," Mr Ahrens said. "Sadly, it also illustrates the significant gap between our current levels of ambition and the science-based targets we must achieve to limit global warming."

At around US$70, the European Union (US$66) along with Finland (US$72.5), Norway (US$65.5) and the UK (US$65.06), have reached or exceeded the lower range of the 2030 target: with Switzerland (US$104.67) and Sweden (US$136.34) leading the world. At the other end of the spectrum, the worst performers include India (7% of global emissions), Russia (5%), Iran (2%), Indonesia (2%), Saudi Arabia (2%) as well as Australia (1%), who collectively account for 19% of global emissions and pay zero. Somewhere in the middle are New Zealand (US$33.5), California (US$21.96) and China (US$8.20).

“What is heartening is that the carbon price and the scope of emissions covered are both increasing steadily. This trend needs greater momentum if we are to get to the target of US$50-$100 and alter the path of climate change,” Dr Cohen said.

BROOME-BASED conservation group Environs Kimberley is warning that Texas-based company, Black Mountain, risks wasting tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars in trying to open up gas fracking fields in the Kimberley.

“Several multinational oil and gas and resource companies have spent large sums of shareholders’ cash on failed exploration in the Kimberley, including ConocoPhillips, PetroChina, Hess, Alcoa and Mitsubishi, with no return on investment,” Environs Kimberley director Martin Pritchard said.

“In a clear signal to other ‘players’, West Australian mining billionaire Andrew Forrest’s Squadron Energy relinquished its oil and gas interests in the Kimberley region’s Canning Basin last month. The company was quoted as saying: 'Squadron Energy continuously reviews its investment portfolio to ensure our projects are aligned with our climate policy and actively support the transition to a low carbon economy'. 

“Faced with a $29 million work program for its exploration leases, and an uncertain future for fossil fuels according to the recent IEA and IPCC reports, which stated there is no more room for new oil and gas fields, Forrest’s withdrawal was seen as a sensible business move," Mr Pritchard said.

"Texas-based fracking company Black Mountain’s subsidiary, Bennett Resources, has bought Mitsubishi’s leases in the Kimberley’s Fitzroy River catchment south-east of Derby. They currently have a 20-well drilling and fracking proposal under assessment by the WA EPA. 

Bennett Resources' Valhalla project scoping document, which was out for public comment until yesterday, attracted more than 2,000 submissions opposing the project. 

“This project has come at the wrong time in history – wrong project, wrong place,” Mr Pritchard said. 

“The world has moved on from new oil and gas fracking fields, and the idea of having thousands of gas-producing wells in the Kimberley has been abandoned by the big multinationals, because the financial and reputational risk isn’t worth it,” Mr Pritchard said. 

“We have seen multiple oil and gas proposals come and go over the past decade, including the Woodside James Price Point scheme, which attracted national and international protests. Black Mountain’s prospects of setting up Texas-style gas-fracking fields are diminishing by the day. 

"The EPA has said it would have to do two years of baseline water monitoring before it can even assess the project. If approved, the 20-well proposal would take seven years to complete," he said.

"That takes us to the year 2030 before any decision on production wells could be made. The price on carbon will be huge by then, and renewables will be by far the biggest sources of clean energy.

“The other problem for Black Mountain is that they have nowhere to sell any gas they may find. No investor in its right mind would be putting money into such a project. 

“Black Mountain could really do with some independent investment advice, and put climate change into the mix, before burning huge amounts of cash, as other multi-national oil and gas companies have. 

"If they are smart, they’ll follow Andrew Forrest’s lead,” Mr Pritchard said. 

www.environskimberley.org.au

ends