Profession / role:

Senior Vice President, Textiles & Apparel

Company / organisation:

Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute

Website (if you have one):

www.c2ccertified.org

My primary role in relation to fashion is:

Entrepreneur

I am looking to discover or buy

Companies executives and product/ fashion designers to embrace C2C design in product creation and certify their products.

About me / About business or organisation:

The Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute is a non-profit organization created to bring about a large scale transformation in the way we make things. Our mission is to provide a continuous improvement quality standard to guide product manufacturers and designers in making safe and healthy things for our world.

The Institute, using the Cradle to Cradle® framework, works with leaders from academia, the NGO environmental community, government and industry to implement a standard for assessing and constantly improving products based upon five categories:

1. Safe and appropriately sourced materials;
2. Material reutilization;
3. Renewable energy and carbon management;
4. Water stewardship; and
5. Social fairness.

Products that meet the transparent criteria of this rating system receive the Cradle to Cradle CM certification mark.

Career history / Company history:

In 1992, William McDonough and Dr. Michael Braungart published The Hannover Principles: Design for Sustainability. In 2002, they published Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, encapsulating a journey of discovery about materials as biological or technical nutrients and their use periods and their evolution. They created a framework for quality assessment and innovation: the Cradle to CradleCM certified program.

In 2010, after 20 years of working with companies, they saw a need to scale up the transformation. They gifted a license to the certification system and methodology to the public through the creation of the Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute™. The non-profit Institute is an agent of change through open source information.