LONDON – This year’s RITE Group conference on sustainable textiles and clothing is looking stronger than ever with the announcement that key industry figures from UK politics, The European Commission and a leading light from Marks & Spencer will all speak at the October 10th event.
The not-for-profit RITE Group has confirmed that Baroness Lola Young OBE will take to the main stage at the event along with Mike Barry, the Head of Sustainable Business at Marks & Spencer. Also confirmed is Pavel Misiga, Head of Unit, Sustainable Production and Consumption, Directorate-General for Environment at the European Commission. Pavel will speak about: ‘Sustainable Consumption and Production: the EU Single Market Perspective’ with a focus on the textile/clothing sectors. His appearance is very timely for RITE Group delegates given that the EU is currently in the middle of revising the ecological criteria for the award of the community EU Eco-label for textiles.
The conference will take place at Central Hall, Westminster, London on 10th October 2012 and this outstanding level of new speakers is in addition to the high profile industry figures already confirmed such as Mark Held, the Secretary General of the European Outdoor Group (EOG). Mark will give a presentation on the challenges of developing eco-metrics for textiles and sustainability and draw on the work of his organisation which represents the interests of most of Europe’s leading outdoor brands such as adidas, Arc’teryx, Berghaus, Helly Hansen, Jack Wolfskin, Mammut and Vaude amongst many others. The EOG also recently set up a new Materials Traceability Working Group, as part of its Sustainability Working Group.
Also speaking at RITE are UK-based brand ‘Worn Again’, which will talk about its latest efforts to upcycle rather than downcycle textile goods into other useful products of similar value with Cyndi Rhoades, CEO and Nick Ryan, Head of Production at Worn Again both sharing a platform.
A discussion on potentially step-changing waterless textile dyeing will also feature at the RITE conference with Reinier Mommaal, the CEO of Dutch engineering firm DyeCoo, talking about the commercial implementation of CO2 dyeing.
More speaker details to follow shortly …
To register your interest to attend the event, email Rebecca Brown at: [email protected]
