Tag Archive for: sustainability

[Intern Insights] Imagining the Future: Value Perception vs. Environmental Impact in the Fashion Retail Industry

Why did humans become the leading species of Earth?

We did two things:

  • We ranked the importance of things surrounding us, giving them value
  • We changed the environment according to these value perceptions

If we look back at the proto-humans, thousands of years ago, and judged them based on the current principles of survival, our assured conclusion would be that they would not survive. Nature did not equip them with sharp claws, poisonous teeth, or hard-shelled exoskeletons. How could they possibly go up against apex predators when countless species of mammals have done so and disappeared?

The one advantage that humans have had is the fact that they wanted more. More food, more heat, more comfort. Although nature did not equip them with features that enabled them to easily achieve it, humans took it for themselves by changing their environment. That still holds true for today!

Value Perception

Nowadays, people expect speed, transparency, and immediate gratification in/with any service or product they purchase. Taking technological advancements into consideration this may seem an easy process. However, to get what we want, we transform our environment, and not always in the best of ways.

Take a look at the fashion industry, we notice that this sector has one of the most drastic impacts on the global surroundings. This makes sense, considering that it is a $3 trillion global industry. Making abstraction of the social issues it supposes and the community sustainability principles it must uphold, the fashion industry starts its environment impact with one word – ‘fiber’.

Here are some dramatic facts about fiber processing:

  • ‘Approx. 70 million barrels of oil are used yearly to create polyester fiber, the most commonly used fire in clothes today.’
  • ‘It takes 200 years for polyester fiber to decompose.’
  • ‘More than 70 million trees are logged yearly and turned into fabrics like rayon, viscose, modal and lyocell.’
  • ‘Plastic microfibers shed from our synthetic clothing into the water supply account for 85% of the human-made material found along ocean shores, threatening marine wildlife and ending up in our food supply.’
  • ‘The apparel industry is the second biggest polluter of freshwater resources on the planet.’
  • ‘A quarter of the chemicals produced in the world are used in textiles.’

(Conca, 2015)

The question is why do we need to invest so may resources into the creation of fiber. True, we number 7.2 billion people now, but it is not our numbers that pushed this change (Conca, 2015). It is our value perception. We want more, we want newer, flashier, more complex, and instant products and services. And if it lasts one or two years, that’s ok, because a better version is right on its heels and we are going to buy that one. Durability, consistency, stability, preservation, these features are no longer sought after.

You might ask yourself why that is so important. Not so long ago, all the products available on the market were handmade. Hours were put into their development and so, because they were not instantly available, they were cherished and their durability appreciated. Now, the speed of consumerism drives a hard-competitive edge and nature by itself cannot keep up without artificial support. What does that mean?

Environmental Impact

Considering the current energy expenditure, we realize that the highest amount is for the least eco-friendly fibers.

For instance, linen is woven from the fibers of the flax plant and it is one of the world’s oldest textiles, as old as 7000 BC.  It is white, lightweight and durable, gentle on the environment, consumes the least of energy, water and pesticides. However, it takes more to weave it and is more expensive. On the upside, it is more durable and more gentle in the contact with the body (Conca, 2015).

Fashion Value Perceptions - Comparative Chart

Cotton, however, is advertised as one of the most natural, high quality fiber. It is used in 40% of clothing and requires large amount of water, 2.6 % of the global water use and is chemically dependent, using 24% of all insecticides and 11% of all pesticides globally (EcoWatch, 2015; Hermes, 2017).

Polyester and nylon are made from petrochemicals and by nature they are not biodegradable. They need the highest amount of energy in their manufacturing, but they also emit large amounts of nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas. Its impact on global warming is almost 300 times that of carbon dioxide, the most ubiquitous greenhouse gas (EcoWatch, 2015).

The next step from the fiber is to give it the desired color. Dyes processing is becoming a concerning issue in Indonesia, where the Citarum River is considered one of the most polluted rivers in the world. All along its banks there are hundreds of textile factories (EcoWatch, 2015).

The end of the life cycle in fashion is when clothes are not needed anymore. With the rising of fast-fashion chains like Zara and H&M, weekly fashion has become the norm (Hermes, 2017). Trends are changing too fast for nature to keep up with the expected demand on its own, and as we buy more, we throw away more. Clothing waste reached new peaks in U.S. in 2014, where the average person discarded 32kg of clothing annually. Approximately 85% of them reach landfills or incinerators. In China millions of tons of unused fabric go to waste each year when dyed the wrong color. Taking into account that 41.3 million tons of fiber are processed there and account for 53% of the world’s total production, this paints a grim color on the textile industry. Although clothing recycling is rising, currently it cannot face the environmental challenges that fast-fashion creates (ibid).

Conclusion

Change is good, it’s what made us who we are today. But I believe we are sufficiently advanced nowadays to understand the consequences of our action on an environment that expands throughout the whole planet. We want more, we want to fit in, we want self-achievement, we want to promote a certain image, because today’s battle of wits comes through value perception. And we want to be valuable in the eyes of our peers. The easiest way to achieve this is through fashion statements. What we wear, what we show other people, with what we are associated, this decides our status in society, our worth. The problem is that we are changing these values so fast that there is no time for the environment to absorb the impact.

It’s simple, today’s value perception is reduced at the power we have over others. Powers is the easiest obtain through accumulated wealth. Wealth comes through the development of businesses. Business need the required services and products to exist. But power over nature we have not. And what we should strive for is a co-existence in harmony. That can only be achievable through the shift of our value perception. Durability over speed. A well-made blouse will still be a blouse in 5 years. It should last 5 years! It will fulfill the same function in 5 years! And by changing the fashion trends we are making it useless in 2 weeks.

We became the apex predator of this planet by transforming the environment to suit our needs and wants. We created our own claws, our own poison, our own shells. But there is no one else to challenge us anymore. And despite that we keep wanting more in the detriment of all other creatures that share our planet. The force of nature is the ultimate power and I am not sure we can become winners by tackling that. I may want to look good now, but I also want to live on this planet when I’m 80. Will nature allow me to do that in 50 years? Will nature even allow humanity to exist in 100 years? Food for thought!

This post is brought to you by one of AQ’s Undergraduates, Laura Susnea. As part of our internship programs, undergraduates and classic interns are encouraged to take part in company culture. Laura’s primary project focusses on training programs and eLearning and how best to adapt this to industries under pressure. 

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[Intern Insight] Imagining the Future: Evolution of Sustainability in the Retail Industry

The retail industry is an extraordinarily dynamic sector. Sometimes it becomes hard to identify the key players and key trends that shape its future. In the previous blog entries, I have discussed the technological and socio-cultural factors that would influence it. However, another key factor to take into consideration is how retail industry impacts the environment and all relevant stakeholders.
Perhaps all the buzz about sustainability is receding, as it becomes mainstream, but its effects are still quite noticeable. The retail industry represented approx. 6% of the global GDP in 2015 (BEA, 2016). Therefore, any sustainable practices adopted by this industry would rebound worldwide. So, who is actually affected?

Customers

Consumers are very aware of the negative changes happening in the worldwide environment. As a consequence, they have adopted a particular purchase behaviour. The top sustainability purchasing drivers worldwide are:

Products being made by trustworthy companies/brands (72%)
Product recognized for health and wellness benefits (59%)
Product made of fresh, natural and organic ingredients (57%)

(Nielsen Global Survey of Corporate Social Responsibility, 2015)

This means that consumers have to build a trust relationship with the brands before considering a purchase. Trust comes through transparency and providing information, which have become the public’s most sought after marketing and promotional tools. Consumers are asking themselves: ‘How was this product made?’, ‘Who made it?’, “In which part of the world was it made?’, ‘In what conditions was it made?’. Customers’ conscience is seeking answers in the issue of how consumerism is affecting the surrounding environment. After all, me and any other customer, we go to a store to purchase, but we leave wondering if we did the right thing? (Fashion Revolution, 2016).

This rise of conscience can come from simple things as – ‘I like the packaging, but how many trees were killed for this to look good?’ to seeing a commercial emphasizing the company’s/brand’s participation in social commitment (Nielsen Global Survey of Corporate Social Responsibility, 2015). Consumer education is done through multiple means but it’s important to find a specific uniformization in its sustainability principles.

Employees

The top promoters and advertisers of a company’s sustainable practices are the employees. Labour force needs both to be developed through a sustainable way and itself to adopt a sustainable approach towards the working lifestyle.
First of all, employees are not only the people that serve us in stores. They are also the people further down along the supply chain. The people who transport the products, the people who assemble the products, the people who create the products, the people who provide the raw materials. So, what does it say for a company if its product materials are of the best quality, but the products were assembled or obtained by workers in conditions akin to the definition of modern slavery. This social issue is especially noticeable in Asia, where Syrian refugees in Turkish factories supply to brands as Marks & Spencer and Asos, Burmese migrants in Thailand’s poultry farms, workers on tea plantations in South India as well as textile mills, and palm oil plantations in Indonesia and Malaysia (Eco-business, 2016). They face terrible working conditions, often with small wages and no social benefits, under the duress of being expatriated.

Slowly moving from the origin of the products towards the end of the line, the distributer’s labour force problem constitutes in small wages, high turnover and low training investment in training and development. People are more interested in doing the right thing when the right thing is done by them. Investing in employees’ development in order to improve the quality of human resources can result in lower turnover and higher sales due to customer satisfaction. Furthermore, providing fair remuneration is considered still a high-performance stimulant.

Companies

At this stage, companies themselves must change their attitudes, top-down approach. They must create the environment for dialogue and understanding, through transparency and development programs.
Sustainability issues such as waste, global warming, carbon emissions, water shortage, waste of energy, they are caused by human activity. Therefore, logic dictates that humans themselves must change in order for their actions to change. However, in the current social context, humans are more focused on their wellbeing through their working lifestyle, and cannot focus and their action’s impact.

Taking into consideration this point of view, companies must focus their sustainability initiatives both on nature-origin related issues as well as the social origin. And it does not only mean the modern slavery in India but as immediate as the employee in the corner store that is struggling to maintain a normal life.

A Silver Lining in Sustainability

A possible solution comes through technological advancements.

Now it is easier to track tiers of suppliers further down the supply chain. The carbon footprint can be measured and processes can be easily adjusted in order to meet sustainable strategic goals.
Fair trade and labour issues awareness are supported through heavy social media activity by worldwide interested parties.

Employee performance can be easily trackable and accurate training can be provided through e-learning platforms.
All is not lost! However, it is primordial that retail companies realize the advantageous role they play in educating society regarding the environment! It’s time to change the world and retail players can set off an unpreceded domino effect for the good of the human kind! We are waiting!

This post is brought to you by one of AQ’s Undergraduates, Laura Susnea. As part of our internship programs, undergraduates and classic interns are encouraged to take part in company culture. Laura’s primary project focusses on training programs and eLearning and how best to adapt this to industries under pressure. 

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[Intern Insight] Imagine the Future: The Transformation of Brick-and-Mortar Stores

In the previous articles in this ‘Imagining the Future’ series, I talked about technological advancements and how it may impact the retail industry. How it can help train employees, or establish the customers’ journey in stores. How it can offer detailed insights at a level previously impossible, and how that can that affect customization, which is so important.
In this article, I would like to imagine how the brick-and-mortar stores will be affected by these technological advancements. After all, if you ask a customer about their shopping experience the first thing that pops into their minds is still the last physical store they visited.
Let’s start with the beginning: What is the current state of the brick-and-mortar stores?
Well, they are still important, that’s for sure! How do I know? Look at Amazon! With pop-up stores and bookstores all across USA – and the new launch of Amazon Go – as a physical location, the largest online retailer has performed a reverse psychology on very unsuspecting customers [Source]! Sure, there are no cashiers and no check-outs, but the question remains:

‘Why does Amazon need to open a real store, in the real world?’

It turns out that customers are not as unsuspecting as we thought! One of their retail cravings is the experience, and nothing creates a better experience than something that reaches all our senses. We live in the real world and although the digital one offers many wonders, at the end of the day we go to sleep and wake up in the ‘here’ and ‘now’!
So what will the ‘here’ and ‘now’ look in the future?
Our lives are cyclical! We wake up, we go to sleep…every day! We look at the ‘kimonos’ from the Edo period and Alexander McQueen transforms them into the new ‘it’ in his ‘Haute-Couture’ Collection [Source]. We look at how food preparation 200 years ago, and Jamie Oliver starts advertising the benefits of growing your own food and eating local products [Source]! If those people from long ago could look at us they would think:

‘What’s so different?’

Would it be so surprising if, in the future, brick-and-mortar stores look just like they do now? Would have the ‘vintage’ feeling? With so many service interactions turning into digital experiences, at one point we will want to go back to the roots of what ‘service’ used to mean. That’s what Amazon is anticipating [Source].
When we analyse the retail brick-and-mortar landscape we notice that stores offer two types of experience designs – boutique self-standing stores, or as part of department stores. The first one offers the sense of exclusivity. ‘No other customer, but you, will ever experience this in-store journey! We are here to make your day special and unique!’. The other conveys the sense of choice.‘You can eat, you can drink, you can shop, you can go onto a roller-coaster! And you only have to move two feet to do these things!’

The truth is that brick-and-mortars must add multiple layers to create the level of complexity that a customer desires to experience. It’s like an onion. The customer enters and assesses the ‘atmosphere’ of the store, forms a first impression, filters the products available, analyses the services and after all this peeling, in the centre, the holy grail of all retailers – the Purchase!

In my opinion, this ‘onion’ is perpetual, simply because customers expect it, anticipate it and desire it! Whereas for the digital customers, if the buffering screen pops up you’ve lost all chance of Purchase!

The transformation of brick-and-mortar stores through technological advancements assumes that technology will help us create a better customer experience. For example, the insights provided by Big Data, as well by the biometrics that start being implemented [Source]. The augmented reality devices designed to help customers make a purchasing decision [Source]. However, the core customer journey will still take place in the brick-and-mortar stores. It’s like Disney, we come back again and again even after fifty years!

This post is brought to you by one of AQ’s Undergraduates, Laura Susnea. As part of our internship programs, undergraduates and classic interns are encouraged to take part in company culture. Laura’s primary project focusses on training programs and eLearning and how best to adapt this to industries under pressure. 

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[Intern Insights] Digitolution: Is digitalization truly green?

Most people have a positive reaction when they see ‘digitalisation’ and ‘environmental sustainability’ in the same sentence. It’s the same feeling we get when encouraged to “go paperless and save trees!”

It’s true, digitising data saves trees. That’s a good thing. However, we all know that the true motivator for most corporations is the bottom line. Honestly, though, we don’t really mind whether they truly care about ‘going green’ because it’s good for the environment.

In addition, IT innovation, digitisation, digitalisation, allow us to cut down on our personal energy usage. It’s a fact that our society has moved to a cloud-based information storage and streaming system. Consider: emails instead of regular mail, conference calls instead of flying in, or online streaming of music and movies instead of taking up space on a physical hard disk, and so on. What great times we live in! All that aside, however, there is little understanding of the negative implications digital actions really have on the environment.

While opinions are divided about our society going digital, we all feel that at least it’s beneficial for the environment – namely, because we assume that digital is greener than paper. Despite the information available, we often turn a blind eye to the unintended consequences of society’s digitalisation.

One of the main points of digitalisation – aside from making our lives easier – has been about reducing our carbon footprints. However, when going digital, we actually create a “digital carbon footprint”.

People often imagine that saving data somewhere ‘on the cloud’ is purely virtually, while in reality the data is stored physically. And the carbon footprint of this physical storage location, the data centre, should not be underestimated!

These data centres can vary from a small room to huge cloud server farms bigger than a soccer field – are not too old yet. In the beginning, the main focus for operators was keeping up with demand. Being energy efficient was not a priority. Today, when setting up one of these centres, issues surrounding sustainability are taken into account more and more [Data Knowledge Centre, 2016].

Still, there is a lot of room for improvement.

The centres consume an incredible amount of energy, as they require a steady flow of electricity to run the servers, no matter the demand. Only 6 – 10% of this energy is actually used, the rest is kept in case of a surge or crash. Spikes for servers hosting data related to online shopping, for example, happen during Christmas times, when all want to buy presents.

In addition, servers need to be cooled down constantly. According to Greenpeace, 50 to 80% of energy comes from coal-generated power – the thought of this is so contradictory, using coal power to keep the digitalisation of society moving forward.

What’s more, the NY Times stated that a single data centre can use more power than a medium- size town and that worldwide data storage uses as much electricity as the output of 30 nuclear power plants.

This creates CO2 emissions. In fact, The Independent wrote that data centres are responsible for 2% of the global CO2 emissions, that’s about the same number of emissions coming from global aviation, and this number will increase! Think about the fact that 2 years ago, 90% of data did not exist! (Mallach, E., 2016).

Besides all advantages innovations such as the Internet of Things, digital supply chains and so on bring, the amount of data that will be created is huge. The Independent further stated that considering the fact that innovations in hardware allow an increased capacity to store data and assuming that a switch to renewable energy won’t happen that fast, it’s still predicted that in the next decade, data centres will use triple as much electricity as today.

So, whilst writing this article, I did not support the environment.

Our seeming to be harmless everyday actions sum up and foster global warming. Whilst sending a text message, streaming movies or music, commenting on social media, we all increase our carbon footprint.

I’m not saying that watching an old-school DVD is greener; it’s hard to compare options with so many factors in play, such as if the DVD is picked up by car and so on. I’m just personally astonished that my online activities are not as green as I believed.

To give examples:

  • One Google search produces around 0.2g of CO2, that’s about the energy used to heat half a cup of water.
  • Sending out 65 short emails is equal to driving an average-sized car for 1km. Even if I do not send out 65 emails a day, I certainly receive too many useless spam mails. An unopened spam mail produces 0.3g of CO2, more than a Google search. This means that the global carbon footprint for spam is equal to emissions produced by 3.1 million passenger cars that use 7.6 billion litres of gasoline yearly.

It’s not only our personal use; businesses shifted to “the cloud”. It’s easy, allows real-time online collaboration between people and gives access to real-time data worldwide. And let’s not to forget, it reduces licensing and purchasing costs for hardware, software and servers.

The good news is that social, economic, environmental and political pressure are pushing big players to publicly commit to using renewable power and reduce both their physical and digital carbon footprints. However, it’s also the countless numbers of small centres that add to the problem. Furthermore, it’s very hard to measure the global carbon footprint that digitalisation leaves behind.

If data centres continue to use coal power or will switch to renewable energy will impact on global warming. A switch to renewable energy definitely would boost investments and thus innovation for green energy.

This post is brought to you by one of AQ’s Undergraduates, Alexa V. As part of our internship programs, undergraduates and classic interns are encouraged to take part in company culture. Alexa’s primary focus is in digital marketing.

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[Intern Insight] Imagining the Future: How Retail Industry Customization Might Evolve

The retail industry is by no means ‘new’ in the general economic landscape. Ever since humans became conscious, developed opposable thumbs and learned that they could use them to create tradable objects, retail started to ‘boom’. It evolved from the Neanderthal trading venison with Homo Sapiens for sturdier clubs, to the beautiful ball gowns tailored specifically for each lady in the glamourous court of France’s Louis XIV. What was the competitive advantage? Easy answer: customization.
Jumping a few centuries forward, the Industrial Revolution enabled us to create more, better and faster. Amidst all these benefits we celebrated the ‘death’ of customization. With the birth of mass production facilitated by assembly lines, we witnessed a levelling of social classes economically as well as socially. After all, we still define ourselves by the objects we own.

Now, customization is back with a vengeance. As we say in Romania – bear with me, the translation isn’t all that easy –  ‘the wheel could even be square but it would still turn at least once more’! We tried so hard to revive this practice of personalization when yet another revolution came to the rescue. This time The Technological one! Digitalization, mobile development, 3D printing… These things have radically changed the retail environment, and have gone a far way in helping to deliver customized products and services.
Will we repeat our previous mistakes?
The Industrial Revolution gave us two alternatives: ‘more and faster’ or ‘customized and slower’. The Technological Revolution transforms these alternatives into one cohesive package: ‘more, faster and customized’. After all, today’s Homo Sapiens is far more complex, and, some might argue, a lot greedier… So, say in 100 years, how will this package evolve?
To answer this question, let’s take a look at three major trends affecting the retail landscape:

  • The rise of the online shopping and its supremacy over brick-and-mortar stores, that gave birth to the omnichannel practice (Lunka, 2015).
  • The shift in the general mindset of the customer towards ‘caring’ for the environment (Nielsen, 2014).
  • The appetite for the luxurious and exclusivist experience (Deloitte, 2015).

So, on top of it being ‘more, faster and customized’, we now also want it to be ‘online, sustainable and luxurious’. We’re not picky at all!

Well, do not fear! I have a solution!

Let’s do an imagination exercise together. It’s December 2116. We wake up, we wash our face, we check the news – which, of course, is displayed on our ‘smart’ mirror (Internet of Things, and all that). We want to dress for work. Maybe a Louis Vuitton skirt, a Chanel blouse, some Gucci shoes, a Burberry scarf…top of my head! Oh, and I forgot, we belong to the middle class.

Most importantly, all these items must be customized for us! I mean, maybe we don’t like our neck so we need to have a specific collar shape for the blouse. We are neither too tall or too short, so the skirt length cannot be universal. The soles of our feet are quite flat so we need orthopaedic features integrated into our Gucci’s.
Now, imagine that we have this robot assistant and all we need to do is to click on the preferred clothing brand and model. This robot measures our body in that specific moment – I don’t know, maybe you gained some weight from one day to another. Then it sends this information to the 3D printer, which uses recycling textile material to print out the clothes, in the desired shape, pattern and colour. Then we go to work, look fabulous and when we come back we can recycle our clothes in order to create new ones the next morning. It’s like shopping every day!

Also read this article: Retail Customer Service: Reality of Retail Industry

So, what are we going to pay for, you might be wondering? For the specific design for that specific brand. After all everything is shifting towards intellectual property! Why not retail? It won’t be long and we will see the ‘Spring/Summer Ready-to-wear Collection’ package on Amazon-like platforms. And if we want the real, live experience? We can go to the flagship store. It would be like visiting the Louvre. Glamorous, educational and spectacular in the sense – ‘Was it really this way clothes were made in the day?”

This is just a picture of the future.

Turning back to the present, the truth is, we are witnessing the rebirth of customization. It has a new shape, a new feel, but it’s there and it will always be waiting for us.

This post is brought to you by one of AQ’s Undergraduates, Laura Susnea. As part of our internship programs, undergraduates and classic interns are encouraged to take part in company culture. Laura’s primary project focusses on training programs and eLearning and how best to adapt this to industries under pressure. 

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