This blog post has more details and photos. If you like what you hear or read, visit my Fertile Ground Communications page on Patreon and find out how you can support my work.
Aroa Fernandez Alvarez is cofounder of the Trace Collective from London, UK. Trace is a group of two organizations—a fashion brand and a nonprofit--on a mission to make fashion regenerative. They are reimagining what it means to be sustainable in today's world by producing fully traceable clothes that drive environmental regeneration, helping reverse climate change.
Aroa and her partner, Antonia Halko, founded Trace Collective and Trace Planet. Aroa’s career has been in environmental and social impact, while Antonia has always worked in the fashion industry. Aroa has been concerned about the impact the fashion industry is having on the environment.
Trace Collective’s mission is to make fashion regenerative. They observed that the mindset of sustainability in fashion is “damaging less.” They have created a fashion company that connects regenerative agriculture, repairing the environment and sequestering carbon from the atmosphere.
All of Trace Collective’s fabric is biodegradable, and they only use fabrics that come from farms. Aroa explained that much of clothing today is produced of synthetic fibers like polyester. These synthetic fabrics are bad for the environment because they frequently are made of oil or petrol. They also shed microfibers into the ocean for as long as they are in circulation.
Trace's fabrics can be traced to the fields, produced without pesticides and without dyes or treatments. Trace Collective does an impact audit on all their products. Their radical transparency strategy has three components for each piece of clothing: traceability, impact, and production cost.
They want to benchmark their components against the industry and ensure they are significantly lower than industry practices.
Aroa explained the impact of fast fashion on the world. “Fashion today is one of the world's most polluting industries. It produces more carbon emissions, more greenhouse emissions than shipping and aviation combined.”
In addition, cotton farmers are not being paid enough. Trace Collective is committed to paying the workers across their supply chain fair living wages. They travel to each of their factories and suppliers and ask very uncomfortable questions about how much their workers paid. They also choose to work with social companies that create value in their communities, moving capital to the social sector and maximizing the value customers receive with their purchases.
To make fashion regenerative, they have two organizations. Trace Collective creates demand for fabric sources from generative agriculture, and the more people buy their products, the more they can support farmers’ transition towards regenerative agriculture.
The vision of Trace Planet is to help society transition from an extractive to a regenerative mindset. Trace Planet also offers educational activities through online and offline events, panel discussions, and fun interactive workshops. Subscribe to the Trace Planet newsletter if you’re interested in the workshops.
Aroa hopes more fashion brands come together in a collaborative way to scale regenerative agriculture and bring transparency to fashion supply. Aroa’s convinced collaboration is the best way to achieve systemic and long-lasting impact, so she recommends finding the right partners to help grow your company and expand your vision.
