On 10 February, HRH Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden awarded the winners of the first Global Change Award, an annual innovation challenge for circular fashion initiated by the non-profit H&M Conscious Foundation. Most votes, and a grant of €300,000, were awarded to the Finnish team for their “Making waste-cotton new; conversion of waste-cotton into new textile” project.
The other awards went to “The polyester digester – using microbes to recycle waste polyester textile” project (€250,000) from USA; to “An online market for textile leftovers – a marketplace for industrial upcycling of spill in production” (€150,000) from Estonia; to “100 percent citrus – creating new textile out of citrus juice production by-products” project (€150,000) from Italy; and to “Growing textile fiber under water – utilizing algae to make renewable textile” project (€150,000) from the Netherlands.
The award ceremony on 10th February marked the beginning of a one year innovation accelerator, provided by H&M Conscious Foundation, Accenture and KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden. The program will help the winners develop their ideas, focusing on three main areas: circular economy, innovation and fashion industry connection.
To further accelerate the transformation towards a circular fashion industry, the Foundation is also launching the Global Change Award Network, an open-source database for innovations.
