high fashion goes carbon neutral
With all the buzz about the designs and the Haiti Relief show at New York’s Fashion Week, you may not have heard that the whole thing was a carbon-neutral event. While we’ve noticed more sustainable fashion on the catwalk, Fashion Week itself is full of planet-abusing decadence: celebrities flying in from all over the planet, limos shuffling everyone around, extravagant runway designs, lots of lights, and the cases of hairspray.
This year IMG Fashion, the folks who put on the show, didn’t cut back on any of the traditions, but they did commission CarbonNeutral Company to conduct a carbon footprint audit. Turns out the show produces just under 1,000 tons of carbon emissions.
To offset all that greenhouse gas, IMG has made some on-site changes, such as recycling and using paper water “bottles.” But the bulk of the effort to bring the show to net-zero emissions is from sponsors Tetra Pak and O.N.E. Natural Experience. For example, Tetra Pak is underwriting two projects: a forestry management effort in the Big River/Salmon Creeks Forest in Mendocino, Calif. and the sustainable sourcing of local natural gas at two dairy farms in Idaho.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Fern Mallis, IMG Fashion senior vice president, said, “I think it’s exciting to think that our runways and lights and shows are lighting up a dairy farm in Idaho….It is the socially and politically conscious thing to do.”
photo credit: Lanterna / flickr
