As impatient change makers, we are curious to explore new ways of using innovation as a driver for change. The Global Change Award is our main lever for innovation and has supported so many brilliant innovators with bold ideas throughout the years, of which many have been piloted and adopted by the industry.

It makes me really proud. Since GCA was launched in 2015, we have gathered a lot of learnings from both our successes and failures. And we are constantly evaluating how we can create even better impact for both the planet and people. So now we’re working on how we can take GCA to the next level.

But why now?

Well, GCA has evolved through the years. From being “a green prize for fashion”, as media dubbed it the first year when circularity was the focus – which was quite an unknown term in 2015 – to the wider planet positive scope that we have today. Every year we’ve made a few tweaks here and there, but change is not happening fast enough, and we believe we can help to find and accelerate the solutions the industry needs to create a bigger impact. I also believe that as a philanthropic foundation, we have an even bigger role to play as we can contribute with funding, support and absorb risk that most private and public actors can’t. So, the decision to take GCA to the next level was pretty simple. And this is what we are working on right now.

So what does this mean, when can I apply?

It means keep an eye out for this space, because a lot of exciting new opportunities will emerge during 2024!

But there’s still a long way to go before the ten newly minted Global Change Award winners will dress the world in their breakthrough materials, overhaul the industry’s supply chain, and transform how we recycle our unwanted garments.

That’s why, during one year, an eco-system of experts, organisations and industry stakeholders are mobilising to support each team to scale at speed.

These are the key takeaways from the first week of the year-long GCA Impact Accelerator programme 2023.

1. Hire people who thrive in areas where you struggle

You might think this is a no-brainer, but as humans we’re hard-wired to be attracted to and prefer those who are like ourselves. This leaves us tempted to bring in partners and hire employees who think like us, have the same skills as us — and even look like us.

Definitely a big no-no, according to food entrepreneur and author Miles Kubheka.

Hire slowly, fire fast and take your time.

Miles Kubheka

“If you’re not intentional about the people you bring in, people will make the place their own. Instead, you should hire slowly, fire fast and take your time — even if it feels like you’re burning,” he says.

In the long run, Miles Kubheka explains, a company’s co-founder is likely to become its greatest asset, and maybe even the face of the brand. And entrepreneurs shouldn’t fear someone else stealing the show — because the innovator may stand behind a brilliant idea, but it often comes down to a co-founder to make that idea famous.

“It’s almost always the marketer who becomes famous, and that’s fine. In the end, the founder and the co-founder are two people, passionate about two very different things.”

2. Bridge the gap between climate impact and capital benefit.

For an innovation to create real impact, it can’t only reduce emissions or halt biodiversity loss. It must solve a problem for people, too. And for corporations to be genuinely interested, solving those problems needs to serve a capital benefit.

“When we look at some great solutions, they also happen to be amazing in terms of recapture of raw materials and reuse of materials. Sell a product once, get it back, and sell it again with a different margin. These are all dollars in the bank for companies, and a great accelerant for growth,” says Caroline Brown, managing director at Closed Loop Partners.

The textile industry needs to encourage start-ups and scale-ups to look at, measure and take pride in their climate impact. But simultaneously, they need to look at how the innovation is good for all parts of a business and an employee community, she concludes.

3. Make friends. And do your homework.

Scaling requires capital. And lots of it.

The problem is that an investment rarely comes from sending a cold email. Instead, it overwhelmingly comes from connections. How to get them? Go mingle.

“Making friends is absolutely vital, because they can be the ones connecting you to investors. Always think ‘who are the people in the room and where else do they hang out? Be direct and ask to connect,’” says Dominic Deane, venture capital investor at The Mills Fabrica.

While friends are good for lots of things, Dominic Deane also stresses the importance on researching each potential investor carefully.

“Do a ton of research! You need to know what the investor your targeting likes, where they’re from, who they work with and what they like to invest in.”

4. The future is glocal. Not global.

The pandemic disrupted every single supply chain on the planet, and the long, complex and fragmented pre-pandemic chains aren’t coming back.

According to Anderson Lee, president and CEO at Pinneco, the dramatically transformed markets are now going from global, to glocal.

“Glocal means to have a global perspective to grow many local markets. In other words — to be very focused and build a narrow chain where you aim to buy materials, hire workers and sell products in one market,” he says and continues: “The pandemic broke the long supply chain, because so many of us went bankrupt.”

Global supply chains often have a negative impact on the planet, and their vulnerability became crystal clear during the pandemic. As fashion brands and textile manufacturers are pivoting to enter a new industrial age, Anderson Lee forecasts glocalisation will play a major part in future-proofing the entire industry’s supply chain.

5. Don’t follow the money. Follow the carbon.

We’re right now experiencing the impacts of climate change in real time. But the large-scale impacts of it are hard to grasp, and even harder for consumers to see their role in. The solutions with the power to provide a soft landing need to communicate it loud and clear.

“It’s a math problem and you need to follow the tons.”

Environmental scientist and impact advisor Linda Greer

“It’s not about innovation for innovation’s sake, but about making the case in numbers that a solution emits this much less carbon, positively affects the industry in a certain way, and that it’s going to be able to scale into a certain level,” Linda Greer says.

Watch the live stream from Open Perspectives to learn more from Miles Kubheka, Caroline Brown, Anderson Lee, Linda Greer and many other brilliant minds.

“We have an urgent opportunity to support innovations that could transform the entire fashion industry – that’s why we’re doubling the grant and the number of winners. We’re giving these innovators a total of 2 million euros and access to our accelerator program – but we’re also giving the industry an opportunity to connect with these brilliant innovators. I’m excited to see the impact these innovators will make on the industry.”

Karl-Johan Persson,
H&M Foundation board member and chairman of H&M Group

The Global Change Award 2023 winners are:

H&M Foundation launched the GCA to provide the tools, connections, and resources necessary for early-stage innovations to move from idea to scale as quickly as possible. The winners receive €200,000 each and embark on the yearlong GCA Impact Accelerator. H&M Foundation together with GCA’s core partners Accenture, KTH Royal Institute of Technology and The Mills Fabrica offer tailored coaching and support to accelerate their journey from idea to scale.

“There’s a wide range of solutions among this year’s winners. If scaled, I believe they could have a real impact on the industry – which needs a holistic transformation if we are to reach a planet positive fashion future. We look forward to working with the winners during the accelerator and help enable their innovations to accelerate and scale.”

Christiane Dolva,
Strategy Lead H&M Foundation

Neither the H&M Foundation nor the H&M Group take any shareholder equity or intellectual property rights in the innovations and the winners can collaborate with whomever they want.

Notes to editors

For more information about the Global Change Award and this year’s winners, please visit globalchangeaward.com.

For visual assets and other press material, free to use, please see our press collection.

For more information or scheduling interviews please contact:
Jasmina Sofić
Media Relations Responsible, H&M Foundation
Mobile +46 73 465 59 59
E-mail: jasmina.sofic@hmfoundation.com

The Global Change Award, initiated by the H&M Foundation, aims to transform fashion and turn the entire textile industry planet positive. That means becoming an industry that benefits the planet and its shared resources, instead of harming or depleting it. Innovation has the power to do it, and GCA winners prove it. The GCA is one of the biggest innovation challenges of its kind, and each year five winners share a 1 million euro grant and get access to the yearlong GCA Impact Accelerator, provided by the H&M Foundation in collaboration with Accenture, KTH Royal Institute of Technology and The Mills Fabrica. Neither H&M Foundation nor H&M Group take any equity or intellectual property rights in the innovations, as the aim is to find innovations that allow major change for the entire textile industry. Learn more at globalchangeaward.com.

EON’s digital ID is enabling over 100 million items to be resold and recycled

“EON embeds principles of connectivity, intelligence and circularity in hundreds of millions of products, and has built some of the industry’s most fundamental product data infrastructure for circular commerce: connecting data between suppliers, brands, resellers, recyclers, customers, and more,” declares EON’s founder and CEO Natasha Frank.

According to her, every single product has a story to tell: from where and how it was made, to when and by what brand it was sold. EON gives the world’s products a voice — in the shape of a digital ID — that unlocks total traceability and boosts the resale and recycling of discarded items.

Since winning the Global Change Award in 2017, EON has scaled at lightning speed and entered into global partnerships with retail heavyweights like Net-A-Porter and Zalando.

“EON was just an idea when I applied for the GCA. Winning the award encouraged me to turn it into a business, and seven years later, here I am.”

Natasha Franck

In seven short years, the company has enabled more than a hundred million products to become digital and traceable. Still, these astounding numbers are just a fraction of the 80 billion pieces of clothing sold worldwide yearly. But the company’s implementation rate is constantly adding speed, and to Natasha Franck, reaching billions of products will be achieved within this decade.

“In five years, every product will have a unique digital ID, giving every product a voice and ensuring products are valued, managed and utilised to benefit our society, economy and environment. EON’s technology is powering that future.”

Dimpora’s mineral-based membranes are moving from lab to launch

The clothes designed to shield us from the elements are almost exclusively crafted from materials that harm the environment. As a consequence, conventional activewear presents a conflict between the desire to experience the natural world, and the desire to maintain it. With biodegradable, non-toxic and mineral-based membranes, Dimpora is resolving this conflict.

“We push for circularity of our membranes and laminates, ensuring we design products with an end-of-life strategy. We use our platform technology to turn the most circular and sustainable raw materials into functional membranes,” says Dimpora’s founder and CTO Anna Beltzung.

When winning the GCA in 2019, the company had only developed early lab samples based on co-founder Mario Stucki’s PHD thesis. The win catalysed their scaling journey.

“The accelerator programme opened up doors and allowed us to build a network in three textile hubs worldwide. And what really helped was the financial contribution, the help in marketing materials, and the recognition in the industry: we were taken seriously!”

Anna Beltzung

Four years in the making, Dimpora has grown from a team of two to a company of eleven and in 2022, the start-up commercialised its first product.

“We are now producing thousands of square meters in a single production run. This made it possible to serve our first commercial order with the Swiss glove brand Snowlife in 2022. And the re-order is already delivered for the coming season.”

Saltyco’s latest pilot can produce 400 tonnes of regenerative fibre-filler

BioPuff by saltyco isn’t a vegan alternative to goose down; it’s a regenerative alternative to it. With cutting-edge technology, saltyco turns native wetland plants into fibre-filler and heals damaged lands in the process.

“For the textile industry to reach net zero, both wetland regeneration and the move to healthier textiles must happen. BioPuff is a solution that brings these two urgent challenges together in one solution,” says Julian Ellis-Brown, co-founder and CEO of saltyco.

The team’s disruptive idea won them the GCA in 2022, an event transforming their start-up journey in a number of ways, according to the founders.

“The win helped build confidence with investors as it showcased an industry-leading organisation was getting behind our idea. The GCA also built traction with brands, exposing us to more innovators within fashion who are keen to explore next-generation textiles.”

Julian Ellis-Brown

Introducing a novel technology and a game-changing material innovation to society is a time-consuming and complex process. Currently, the saltyco team is focusing on sampling, product development, and launching a seed funding round.

“Our new pilot machinery will have the capacity to produce 400 tonnes of BioPuff per year, regenerating thousands of hectares of wetland and locking tens of thousands of kilograms of CO2 back into the ground,” says Julian Ellis-Brown.

Explore all past GCA winners and subscribe to the GCA Newsletter to track their progress.

MATERIAL

Algreen (UK)

Algreen invents the world’s first entirely biobased polyurethane that is both recyclable and biodegradable for sustainable fashion. Polyurethanes are widely used in the fashion industry for making foam, adhesive and waterproof coatings.

ALT TEX (Canada)

ALT TEX has created the world’s first carbon neutral and biodegradable polyester alternative, engineered from the world’s largest landfill contributor – food waste. The bio polyester eliminates the fashion industry’s dependence on carbon-intensive fabrics.

Arda Biomaterials (UK)

Arda Biomaterials transforms a widely available feedstock, the waste grain from the brewing industry, into an animal & plastic-free leather alternative that is scalable and which will ultimately undercut the price of leather and plastic-filled alternates.                        

Bylon: a truly circular fiber (US)

Sci-Lume Labs converts biobased carbon into a biodegradable high-performance fiber called Bylon. Circular and drop-in ready, it is a scalable value-added fiber that will reduce our dependence on petroleum-based, synthetic fibers today… and in the future.

Dynamic Adaptive Textile-tech (Sweden)

We provide smart multi-sizing components, integrated in apparels and shoes, which enables shift to different sizes on-demand, multiple times for perfect-fit. This creates sustainability in both the production and consumption stages of the value chain.                         

KBCols Sciences Pvt. Ltd. (India)

The use of synthetic colours (derived from petroleum) has led to many challenges. KBCols, a biotech studio fuelled by innovation, is producing sustainable natural bio-colours from small living safe micro-organisms to colour the world in a different way!

Nanoloom (UK)

Ultra high-performing textiles, based on wonder material graphene and biomimicry, which are biodegradable and recyclable plus lightweight, strong, elastic and waterproof without additives. Adoption is driven by the performance increase over last-gen tech.

OCEANIUM (UK)

OCEANIUM’s kelp fiber has multiple and diverse potential as a base material for textiles, apparel, packaging and other uses. OCEANIUM’s kelp fiber is one of the outputs of our unique clean, green and proprietary biorefinery technology.

PHYCOFIBER-REGENERATIVE FABRIC (Brazil)

Fashion is one of the most polluting industries. For a systemic change, we developed a circular and regenerative product, from traceable cultivation with traditional communities to the production of yarn with eco-friendly and scalable technologies.

Radiant Matter (UK)

The next generation of vibrantly glittering colour and material solutions for the circular textiles economy, removing the fashion industries reliance on dyes, metals, minerals and micro plastics.

Rethread Africa (Kenya)

Rethread is redefining the future of sustainable circular fashion.

Spinning Like Spiders (UK)

By replicating spiders’ spinning, we provide a unique protein-based yarn, which uses renewable inputs, requires low-energy processing and minimal chemicals. The yarns outperform many typical textiles and eliminates microplastics and petrochemical usage.

PRODUCTION

Billion Liter Water Savings (US)

Our fully developed and proprietary carbon dioxide cleaning technology can be adapted to clean raw natural fibers (cotton, wool, etc.) Implementing this technology into textile production will save billions of litres of water annually.

COLOURizd (US)

COLOURizd is a technology to colour cellulosic yarn. COLOURizd technology injects pigment and a binder into a yarn bundle to create a beautifully coloured yarn through a continuous process.

RECYCLING

DyeRecycle (UK)

DyeRecycle is the first technology that tackles chemical circularity in the fashion industry through circular dyeing via recycled dyes and the decolouring of textile waste fibres which increases the fibre value and enable more efficient recycling of fibres.

Refiberd (US)

Refiberd has developed an AI and spectroscopy-based textile sorting system that sorts post-consumer garments within a 1% material range with >90% accuracy (i.e., can detect with >90% accuracy that a garment is 98.5-99.5% polyester and 0.5-1.5% spandex).

Reti Ecotech (India)

With the goal of preventing textile waste from going into landfills, Reti Ecotech is the first company in India to convert textile waste into indoor construction panels to meet the growing demand for sustainable construction materials.

reverse.fashion (Germany)

Our automated sorting machine enables the fashion industry to recycle and reuse every product at the highest possible value by combining the strengths of AI-powered image recognition, Raman spectroscopy and RFID based DPPs capturing relevant product data.

ShareTex (Sweden)

ShareTex targets the recycling of cellulosic waste textiles regardless of the properties of the starting material. The fractions that cannot be transformed into new textiles are instead transformed into sugar that can be used to produce biochemicals.

Tereform (US)

We have developed a platform for textile-to-textile recycling for polyesters. This technology is effective in the presence of additives such as elastane, nylons, and dyes, enabling production of recycled garments without compromising on cost or quality.

DESIGN

SXD (US)

SXD is a tech-powered design platform for fashion brands and designers wanting to turn their simple sketches into iconic designs with zero fabric waste, less material consumption, and cost savings. We reimagine patternmaking.

Linda Greer, the fashion industry’s go-to sustainability scientist, is one expert panellist. She’s most keen to help identify solutions best suited to help the industry succeed in its mission to reduce GHG emissions.

“The apparel industry is at a pivotal moment in its sustainability work, with ambitious quantitative goals to reduce its GHG emissions by 45% by 2030, but without a large portfolio of solutions to help achieve those goals. The Global Change Award can play an important role in identifying and promoting exciting, innovative solutions to assist in the reduction efforts that brands will be undertaking with increased urgency in the coming 5+ years, and I’m keen to help identify those solutions best suited to help the industry succeed in this mission,” Greer says.

But we can’t only rely on innovations, can we? If we want change to happen, we need the industry to believe that change is possible. One of our expert panellists is Miles Kubheka, a trailblazing entrepreneur who is part of the GCA because he believes that change does not happen organically, it needs some nudging.

“Change often requires a catalyst that spurs it on and creates the vision and foresight for people to join a movement. It often requires leadership to steward the first responders who then create it into a movement. I am excited to be part of the GCA because I see this award as that catalyst which propels those working towards solutions to solve systemic problems,” Kubheka says.

Caroline Brown, experienced executive in the fashion industry and another expert panellist, knows that the road from lab to pivot and scale is a complex one and there is a need for unexpected collaborations and partnerships in order for the GCA winners to succeed.

“GCA brings together the valuable partnership between early-stage innovation, large corporate involvement, and capital – which are all critical to the future of fashion. The program is an accelerant to great ideas and has the ability to turn a ground breaking innovation into a reality for companies, consumers and the environment alike,” Brown says.

Many of the entrants into GCA do not come from the fashion industry and therefore look at solutions from a completely new lens – which can ignite real innovation. She’s excited to see creativity and an ever-growing level of approaching of concepts from a completely new angle.

“The beauty of the fashion industry at the moment for smart innovators is that there is room across the entire value chain – beginning in the design room of a company all the way through to the end of life of a garment. The need for solutions is great everywhere – and interdependent upon each other as the solutions live within a complete product life cycle. For example, a biodegradable material will only degrade if it lands in the right place after use, a transparency technology that can aid material identification for sorting is only as affective as the processor’s ability to read it and so on. The need is huge and this is why we see incredible thinkers, scientists or technologists coming into the sector right now,” Brown continues.

The GCA Expert Panel consists of seven independent panellists that have extensive knowledge within fashion, business, investments, entrepreneurship, and innovation. They are part of selecting our winners and play an active role in the GCA Impact Accelerator. They all participate pro bono.

Learn more about the GCA Expert Panel.

“We want to attract ground-breaking innovations with an ability to scale and make real impact in the industry. We have received a range of fantastic ideas from all over the globe with innovations across the value chain. Our screening process is exhaustive, and the choices can be tough. Now, we are conducting due diligence, collecting support documents, verifying claims, and doing interviews. It’s an exciting period.”

Christiane Dolva, Strategy Lead Planet Positive

The applications were first reviewed by a broad group of specialists in the fashion industry as well as by the H&M Foundation and GCA’s core partners. Innovations were assessed based on potential planet positive impact; ability to scale; level of novelty, and the team’s experience and capacity. They then went through H&M Foundation’s due diligence process, and now the GCA 2023 Expert Panel, consisting of independent subject experts within fashion, business, investments, entrepreneurship, and innovation, conduct their own independent analysis and scoring.

Linda Greer, the fashion industry’s go-to sustainability scientist, is one expert panellist. She’s most keen to help identify solutions best suited to help the industry succeed in its mission to reduce GHG emissions.

“I’m interested in innovations in the ’heavy manufacturing’ part of the supply chain – Tier 2 dyeing, finishing, and printing. While we wait to decarbonize the sector, it’s important to reduce Tier 2 emissions as much as possible – with best available technologies as well as breakthrough innovations for waterless dyeing, digital printing, and more.”

Linda Greer, Global Fellow at Institute for
Public and Environmental Affairs Beijing China

The final GCA 2023 winners will be announced on 8th June 2023.

Visual assets free to use here.

More information about the top 20 finalists here.

For more information or scheduling interviews please contact:

Jasmina Sofić
Media Relations Responsible, H&M Foundation
Mobile +46 73 465 59 59
E-mail: jasmina.sofic@hmfoundation.com

Now, almost 260 years later, we’re at another turning point.

This time, it’s about shifting the textile industry’s planetary impacts and making fashion benefit the planet’s ecosystems. It’s about making the industry’s complex, fragmented and global supply chains fully traceable. And to purify industrial wastewater in a single step. And to end textile waste by enabling manufacturers and recycling facilities to map, trace and trade the leftovers. It’s about driving change across the entire industry.

H&M Foundation initiated the Global Change Award in 2015 to accelerate this shift. And we have a network of over 30 innovations to prove that real change is possible — and taking place right now.

Ahead of the 2023 iteration, we caught up with winners from 2016 and 2020 to deep dive into their scaling journeys.

The GCA supercharged TextileGenesis growth

TextileGenesis won the award in 2020 with a traceability platform that uses reliable blockchain technology to trace sustainable fibres from farm to factory, to retailer to consumer.

“The year we won, we were tracking close to 100,000 products. Now, we’re tracking close to 500 million. During the last two years, while working closely with the GCA, we’ve supercharged our growth.”

Amit Gautam, founder TextileGenesis

His team currently works with over 30 brands— including Kering, H&M Group, Bestseller and Lenzing — across 20 countries. Amit Gautam considers brands’ commitment to sustainability as one of TextileGenesis’ success factors.

“Sustainability and traceability are two sides of the same coin. If you’re investing in sustainability, you have to invest in traceability too,” he says and continues:

“If you look back five to ten years, hardly any brands or retailers had traceability as a function. Now, so many have appointed vice presidents or directors of traceability. This is a function that is being set up.”

From garage prototype to commercial pilot

While TextileGenesis is fuelling fashion with traceability, SeaChange Technologies is on a scaling journey that will transform how the industry manages wastewater.

Their breakthrough water treatment technology makes it possible to purify the most challenging industrial wastes, eliminating sludge, chemical discharge and GHG emissions in a single step.

“The Global Change Award has been amazing for SeaChange Technologies. It gave us the support to go from our garage-built prototype to a device ready for a commercial pilot trial to change how people manufacture and handle their wastewater. There’s no way we could have done that without the H&M Foundation’s support,” says founder Dipak Mahato.

Mapping, tracing and trading to end textile waste

Currently, the textile industry produces 150 billion garments each year.
By manufacturing these enormous quantities of clothing, a massive amount of waste is inevitable. Reverse Resources’ mission is to end textile waste. And they do it through an online SaaS platform that helps fashion brands and their textile-to-textile recycling partners to map and source high quality waste transparently, from garment factories and post-consumer collectors, while building a global overview of circular textile flows for the industry in real time.

“We are tracing roughly 1,000 tons of production waste per month from factories in countries like Bangladesh, India and Turkey to recycling across Asia and Europe, which is just a start of the journey with most of our partners,” says co-founder Ann Runnel.

Reverse Resources is one of the inaugural GCA winners, yet, the team behind it hasn’t opted out of the network of experts, stakeholders and entrepreneurs that the challenge and its ensuing programmes provide.

“The GCA Impact Accelerator wasn’t just for one year. It has been going on for us for six years already, and we keep getting support, which is so helpful on this journey,” says Ann Runnel.

Discover all Global Change Award winners from 2016 to 2022 here.

The Global Change Award is one of the world’s leading challenges for early-stage innovation, and the largest of its kind in the fashion industry. Since the start in 2015, several former GCA winners have scaled up their innovations and are now helping drive the planet positive development forward. Neither H&M Foundation or H&M Group take any shareholder equity or intellectual property rights in the innovations. The winners can collaborate with whomever they want, and the aim is to find innovations that allow major change for the entire industry. For GCA 2023, we are updating our scope to cover more ground, raise the bar on innovation and help shift the industry into a planet positive one. The winning innovations or solutions should fall into one of three categories.

“Circularity isn’t enough, we need to raise the bar and become planet positive. That’s why we’re looking for solutions that enable a planet positive fashion future where both people and the planet not only survive but also thrive. I am confident there are great ideas out there, ready to accelerate and scale – and we’re here to support them!”

Christiane Dolva, Strategy Lead at the H&M Foundation

A panel of experts will select five winners who get to share a 1 million euro grant and get access to our one-year long GCA Impact Accelerator programme, which includes invaluable coaching and support from the H&M Foundation and our partners Accenture, KTH Royal Institute of Technology and The Mills Fabrica. The programme is tailored to support each team in developing and scaling their innovation for impact. The application period runs from 20 October 2022 to 8 December 2022 and the winners will be announced in June 2023.

“The Global Change Award has become a force to support early innovation and accelerate the transformation of our industry. It attracts some of the most disruptive and creative people I have ever met, and following their development is really impressive. I am excited to see what game-changing innovations the seventh round generates.”

Karl-Johan Persson, board member of H&M Foundation and Chairman of H&M Group

Note to editors

• The entries are reviewed by H&M Foundation together with Accenture, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, The Mills Fabrica and an international panel of experts with extensive knowledge covering the entire value chain in the fashion and textile industry, business, investments, entrepreneurship and innovation.
• For more information on previous winners and their progress: hmfoundation.com/gca/winners
• To find out more about the Global Change Award and how to apply: globalchangeaward.com
• To access visuals free to be used, downloaded, and shared: https://tinyurl.com/mr2djkny

For more information or scheduling interviews please contact:
Jasmina Sofić
Media Relations Responsible, H&M Foundation
Mobile +46 73 465 59 59
E-mail: jasmina.sofic@hmfoundation.com

The Global Change Award, initiated by the H&M Foundation, aims to transform fashion and turn the entire textile industry planet positive. That means becoming an industry that benefits the planet and its shared resources, instead of harming or depleting it. Innovation has the power to do it, and GCA winners prove it. The GCA is one of the biggest innovation challenges of its kind, and each year five winners share a 1 million euro grant and get access to the yearlong GCA Impact Accelerator, provided by the H&M Foundation in collaboration with Accenture, KTH Royal Institute of Technology and The Mills Fabrica. Neither H&M Foundation nor H&M Group take any equity or intellectual property rights in the innovations, as the aim is to find innovations that allow major change for the entire textile industry. Learn more at globalchangeaward.com

On 16 June, we invited investors, innovators, business leaders and a myriad of other stakeholders to give their perspectives on the opportunities and challenges ahead.

Keep scrolling to watch the keynote speeches and panel discussions.

Introduction

Karl-Johan Persson, Board Member, and Diana Amini, Global Manager H&M Foundation.

Panel: From Lab to Launch

Christiane Dolva, Strategy Lead, H&M Foundation gives an introduction to what planet positive is and why it makes sense for the fashion and textile industry to set it as a focus. Christiane’s talk is followed by a panel discussion on scaling innovation with Isaac Nichelson, Founder & CCO at Circular Systems, and Amit Gautam, Founder & CEO at TextileGenesis. Moderated by Rachel Cernansky, Senior Sustainability Editor of Vogue Business and member of the 2022 GCA Expert Panel.

”If we really want to have a meaningful, long term change towards a sustainable fashion industry – fashion brands need to lead the way and invest in people and technology that can achieve that change.”

Amit Gautam, TextileGenesis

Panel: Betting on the Future

Panel discussion on investor support with Erik Karlsson, Investment Manager at CO:Lab, H&M Group, Eva Karlsson, CEO at Houdini Sportswear, and Nikita Jayasuriya, General Manager Europe at The Mills Fabrica. Moderated by Christiane Dolva, H&M Foundation.

“One thing that has been important for us is to be open source in the sense that if we go into an innovation process with other brands, we never ask for exclusivity, which is actually the case for many of our colleagues in the business. Asking for exclusivity for a sustainable solution – what’s the point? If we choose to be open source, brands, whether big or small, can scale faster.”

Eva Karlsson, Houdini Sportswear

About Planet Positive Perspectives

The Planet Positive Perspectives by H&M Foundation is an ongoing forum to discuss challenges, learnings and solutions to accelerate the transformation to a planet positive fashion and textile industry.