Whether it’s enough, however, is a different story. “If they’re saying that this is material that would otherwise go to a landfill or incinerator and we’re going to make a design that incorporates it, I think that’s really positive. I think all companies should be thinking that way. But, it doesn’t get to the root issue, which is [that] we’re living outside the planetary boundaries,” she says.
“I think all corporations that make apparel, handbags, footwear, whatever, should be thinking about this — about the scraps [generated] during production and how can they incorporate them into design, use them, at the very least can they shred them and turn them into insulation.”
By designing with waste from the start, Coach is ensuring that it will not only keep materials from going to a landfill but also, potentially, offset the use of new materials in the process. Sacks is clear that she sees that as a far more sustainable way to produce fashion than the industry’s conventional approach. It still amounts to more products, though, when what the planet needs is fewer products — which is a criticism not of Coach, but of the industry’s business model as a whole.
While Coachtopia marks a profound shift in both design mindset and manufacturing process for the company, it also comes with a risk: it can, whether intentionally or inadvertently, create a perverse incentive for Coach to produce more goods — creating more scraps in the process that they can then “salvage” from going to waste.
Silverstein dismisses that notion. “[At] Coach, the cost of material waste generated is included in the product cost of goods (and in the product’s carbon footprint), and therefore we have strong financial incentives to continually reduce the amount of material waste generated,” she says, adding that the “overriding mission” of Coachtopia is to reduce Coach’s total environmental impact and the to find and scale new ways of working.
“One of our key priorities is to minimise the use of virgin raw materials. We’re doing it in two ways: [one] by thinking about how we transform waste into raw material inputs — and two, designing out waste in the first place. Both of those are equally important,” she says. “If one day we figure out how to use all the waste we generate without creating more, which is a long way off, we will move on to tackling new problems.”
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