Avery Dennison to showcase alternatives for a sustainable future at Copenhagen Fashion Summit

Global innovator to use this year’s event to drive a call to action, providing industry-wide solutions and a united approach

New York, 7th May 2019 - Global leader in innovative materials science and manufacturing, Avery Dennison looks to the Copenhagen Fashion Summit 2019 as a pivot point for the global fashion industry. As the event’s principal sponsor, the company is harnessing the summit’s focus on sustainability to present tangible initiatives that enable actionable industry-wide change.

Committed to leading sustainable and material change, Avery Dennison is developing a new way of doing business that prioritizes positive progress, internal and external collaborations as key success drivers, and sustainability as an innovation platform. Key to this commitment are ten solutions that will be showcased on the summit’s exhibition floor and available for creative directors of the world’s leading retailers to experience first-hand.

Sustainable solutions

In celebration of the event’s 10th year, the Design Studio by Avery Dennison will exhibit ten solutions developed for a sustainable future over the course of the two-day summit. Additionally, designer and Avery Dennison brand partner Christopher Raeburn will take part in The Power of Creatives panel on day one, while Michael Barton, vice president and general manager, Global Commercial, Avery Dennison RBIS, will be a featured main stage panellist on day two, as he discusses how to disrupt an industry.

Central to Avery Dennison’s showcase sits ALYX, a proof of concept innovative blockchain solution for the apparel industry that was developed in partnership with 1017 ALYX 9SM and is powered by EVRYTHNG. The Intelligent Label system can be scanned to provide trustworthy product authentication and supply chain transparency for every individual garment. Crucially, ALYX enables the digital traceability of goods with a highly secure distributed ledger technology and no centralized entity controlling the information. Brands can have full visibility of their product’s journey throughout the supply chain, and access to data and statistics across different sales channels and consumer preferences.

Avery Dennison will also showcase its partnership with the Plastic Bank, a social enterprise that provides a root-cause solution to ocean plastic and helps alleviate extreme poverty by effectively monetising plastic waste. This key partnership supports Avery Dennison’s aim to reduce waste and help minimise the fashion industry’s impact on the planet.

Systemic change driven by innovative collaboration

According to the Ellen Macarthur Foundation’s 2017 research, over 8 million tonnes of plastic waste is dumped into the ocean each year - the equivalent of a dump-truck’s worth per minute. Considering the ever-rising production and consumption of virgin plastic material, it’s estimated that plastic will outweigh fish in the ocean by 2050. Unless we change.

“The scale of change required to improve the sustainability of our industry simply won’t happen in isolation,” says Barton. “In order to shift the bar in a significant way, we need to positively disrupt the supply chain in collaboration with our brand partners and our competitors.”

“Collaboration is central to our innovation and sustainability strategy” adds Michael Colarossi, vice president of innovation, product line management and sustainability, Avery Dennison RBIS. “We believe that acting together as an industry, rather than individual entities, is the fastest and most efficient way of bringing solutions to our most challenging problems. The progress we've made in product innovation and sustainability practices is already making a difference at local levels. But by scaling these solutions globally, the fashion industry can have an outsized positive impact.”

Alongside ALYX and the Plastic Bank sits Avery Dennison’s N.G.S.M. (Next Generation Sustainable Materials) initiative, born with the aim of taking a major step towards sustainability in terms of substrates for all paper items as well as Kraft Bag, a durable and sustainable material developed with e-commerce shipments in mind, and the 100% Recycled Polybag made from industrial waste that otherwise would end up in landfills or in our oceans.