It was a great honour for us to be part of the Young Climathon project and to admire the inspiring and great ideas of the students who worked with a wonderful energy on sustainable solutions to inform about fashion production and recycling. The Young Climathon has grown into a global movement that engages citizens in climate action and provides cities with continuous support for their local challenges. The Young Climathon is a platform, where students come together to address a specific climate issue and, with the help of mentors and various methodological tools, develop innovative solutions and turn them into projects.
The Climate Action academy fashion team consisted of Remy Rupp and Martin Leal from the 2811 agency. For the project, the challenges for sustainable fashion production in terms of a circular economy were identified together with experts and presented to the students, who then developed ideas and prototypes based on the results. On October 20, the ideas were presented to teachers, experts and mentors at the Lettverein under the title “Young Climathon”. These include Heide Kaul, Natalia Weimann, and Martina Vogt from the Lette Verein Berlin, Sarah Maria Schmidt from Fashion Changers, Jenica Clocker from the AMD Akademie Mode & Design, Stefanie Barz from LoopLook, Dominique Ellen van de Pol, Julia Krüger from Berlin Partner für Wirtschaft und Technologie GmbH, Simon Heeger from Lenzing Group and me for autark.berlin.
Six student groups presented their ideas and presentations. Great projects were shown, such as a clothing passport that uses a color scale to indicate whether the clothing was produced locally and under fair conditions or an app that provides an overview of the certifications. The challenge of how to deal with textile waste in Berlin was also addressed. There were suggestions as to what a network and platform for all stakeholders in the fashion industry for sustainable fashion production could look like. Small surveys were presented to show how sustainably different target groups actually shop and how much knowledge about sustainable fashion exists. A fantastic achievement for Letteverein students in their first year of training. We are very excited to see whether sustainability will continue to be embedded in the Lette Verein’s curriculum. After these great ideas and the enthusiasm for sustainability shown by everyone involved, we really hope so.
This Climathon event resulted from an inspiring and innovative 5-weeks program, funded by the Erasmus+ program of the European Union and supported by Climate-KIC, that sought to empower the students to use their professional development to bolster sustainability and circularity in the fashion industry.
Photo header by Ash from Modern Afflatus Unsplash