by Sustainable Choice Group 04/10/2023
A Sustainability Journey, Fashion and Clothing
This article has been written and supplied by Country Road.
The Climate Fund was launched in October 2022, committing $1.5 million in grant funding over three years. In our first year, we granted $547,000 across three organisations. You can read more about the projects here.
The Country Road Climate Fund is a philanthropic grants program that aims to support projects that mitigate climate change, by reducing greenhouse gas emissions (directly or indirectly) and building climate resilience across four key pillars:
Biodiversity – Protecting or restoring nature (for example, a conservation project on a wool farm aimed at improving the state of biodiversity)
Circularity – Reimagining the textile life cycle from a take, make and dispose mindset to an avoid, reduce, reuse, and recycle model (for example, a project that enables garment renewal or on-shore textile recycling)
First Nations – Supporting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander-led projects and partnerships (for example, a First Nations organisation working with local cotton farmers to implement traditional land management practices)
Innovation – Unique, disruptive, and game-changing technologies and ideas shifting the face of the fashion industry (for example, a technology that dramatically improves the carbon footprint of local manufacturing)
Country Road recognise there are many existing and innovative climate solutions that lack the finance to be developed or deployed across the fashion industry. The aim of the Country Road Climate Fund is to bridge this financing gap by investing in, incubating and accelerating climate solutions in the Australian fashion industry.
Further information on the fund can be found here or by contacting climatefund@countryroad.com.au.
Check out our Sustainable Transformation podcast episode with Elle Roseby, the Managing Director of Country Road, whose decades-long career has encountered the many changing faces of sustainability in fashion. Elle generously shares how Country Road has embedded sustainability into their DNA by empowering people, embracing traceability, prioritising raw materiality and innovating sustainably in every element of the business. Check our parts one and two HERE.
