Watch the recording here: Part 1 on Fashion and Part 2 on Packaging
We live in a time when the effects of climate change and plastic pollution are felt more strongly than ever before. The rise of online shopping and food delivery services allows us to order anything to our door, but with low costs and convenience comes plastics-based fast fashion and high volumes of unrecyclable packaging. Forests are critical to disrupting this “buy, use and dispose” model of linear consumption as well as being key to achieving global climate change mitigation and adaption goals. Forest based fibres can produce innovative fashion and packaging products that will support the transition to more sustainable patterns of production and consumption within a circular bioeconomy.
Within this context, the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe marked the International Day of Forests 2022 on 21 March with an online event that focused on how leaders in the fashion textile and packaging sectors are shaping sustainable relationships between forests and circular production models to reduce carbon emissions, waste and plastics pollution across the global economy.
Experts shared innovative approaches to embedding the circular economy into supply chains, discussed new ideas and asked critical questions about (over)consumption and our relationship with the natural world such as:
- What are the innovative uses of wood fibre-based products in our everyday lives?
- How can a sustainable production and consumption of wood products help to decarbonize industries, to transform the way we (re)use resources and to support the transition towards more sustainable lifestyles?
- What are our options for choosing wood wisely while caring for our forests within the context of a rapidly changing climate?
The event will took place virtually on 21 March 2022 in English, French and Russian.