My grandmother used her old clothes to re-make dresses for us as children growing up in West Africa. But today, 1 large truckload of clothes ends in landfills every second. My why is to reduce this environmental pollution catastrophe we need to reuse our textiles/clothing in a more sustainable and ethical way. This can be done by educating the next generation to consume less and gain an understanding of the impact this is having globally.

My business will educate families to reuse their clothing by repairing and re-making creative items that can be gifted or sold.

I am a self-taught pandemic quilter and passionate scraps collector with over 25 years working in Hackney Community Development & Engagement within education, families and community support services, as well as a trained Adult & Family learning facilitator.

Each One, Teach One is a community scrap & quilting studio. In Hackney, most people on low income have limited access to quality upcycling and creative art such as quilting; while also most likely to face fuel poverty and poor housing conditions.

We aim to honour the roots of quilting, which include well-being, community, creativity and upcycling, by supporting people to use problem-solving skills through providing a free, safe, intergenerational studio space where we can learn, train, create, give and sell beautiful & useful quilts. This in turn helps to reduce waste & improve the circularity of resources through collecting scraps, off-cuts, deadstock and donations from local businesses (fashion production), communities and partnerships.

We have developed a revolutionary patent-pending construction system founded on the principles of the circular economy.

It combines cutting-edge digital and distributed manufacturing techniques with the simplicity of a children’s toy, to allow construction at 5 times the speed of traditional methods and mastery of the construction process to be attained within days. It allows the assembly, disassembly, and reassembly of buildings many times, in many configurations, for many purposes – all without generating waste – and therefore opens up new possibilities for construction.

For the past 12 years I have been running Splendid Stitches, a clothing alterations and repair studio in Central London, specialising in vintage.

Post-pandemic I noted a real change in customer attitudes and a lack of availability for customers of sustainable fashion brands being able to get their clothes repaired or altered, with repairs being hard to come by, perceived as expensive and varying in quality. This means the clothes are underutilised, binned unnecessarily, or it is just easier and more convenient to buy new than repair, leading to over consumption and waste.

My solution is to work with clothing brands and retailers to set up and offer in-store repairs and alterations services, making it easy for the end-consumer and offering a new circular revenue generation for the retailer through repairs and upskilling their staff through training and development.

I’m an entrepreneur, knitwear designer, educator and creative enthusiast with experience in business strategy, fashion, advertising and digital content creation.

I have two design-based businesses that explore social action and issues, with focuses on sustainability and LGBTQ+ representation that underpin my brand ethos and personal outlook on life.

Did you know that globally, 66% of Gen-Z and 46% of Millennials shop outside their assigned gender? With this in mind, Insert Self Here [ISH] was created to cater to a growing community of open-minded people. With a focus on the LGBTQ+ community, [ISH] produces a range of quirky, creative sustainable knitwear to combat the lack of gender expression within mainstream fashion.

[ISH] champions inclusivity alongside sustainability, with community development, representation, and sustainable practices through four pillars: sustainable design, manufacturing, marketing and retailing. Brand and policy co-creation, customers featured in advertising campaigns and our district multifunctional packaging set us apart. We’re also eager to reinvest back into the industry and local communities with internships, scholarships, partnerships with charities on local, national and eventually global initiatives on representation and sustainability. So, welcome to [ISH], where we combine creative design with sustainability and gender expression, and where we’re anything but ‘beigeic’.

I’m also a lecturer at the University of West London across a number of creative courses. My passion lies in design and creative experimentation, aiming to expand my own insights and share knowledge and experience with others to help them on their own creative and entrepreneurial journeys.

I’ve been a London resident for the last decade, initially moving from a small town in North East Lincolnshire to study a BA in Fashion & Textiles, but stayed after falling in love with the city, culture and creative expression. I’ve always been a creative individual, but since discovering knitwear my desire to experiment and produce garments really took off.

I’m an ex-restaurateur – a chef , recipe developer, restaurant consultant of 15 years and recently a food anthropologist. Poor diet is now the number one cause of death worldwide ahead of smoking – and the UK has among the worst rates of food security in the developed world.

I’m on a mission to set up “Sometimes”: an organic neighbourhood delivery kitchen with a practice informed by socio-cultural and environmental issues that are currently affecting our food system. Sometimes will work with recipes that reflect the neighbourhood it’s based in. It will use the age-old preparations people love to eat and turn them into waste-free and microbiome-boosting recipes sourcing ingredients solely from local independent suppliers.

We’ll use a chunk of the profits to create a platform called ‘You and I eat the same’ – where we can provide the same dishes through a paid forward stigma-free food delivery scheme while enabling residents to support their neighbours on a low income.

I have a background in community development, most recently specifically around reducing isolation in marginalised communities, where I have recruited, trained and matched volunteers with people who are lonely and/or at risk of isolation. As a dog owner and walker, I have daily opportunities to go outdoors and interact with other people, and I recognise the value of my own physical, mental and emotional health.

My project, Walkies and Talkies, is a dog walking business with the added value of offering opportunities for lonely people who do not own a dog to walk with us and enjoy the benefits of non-judgmental interactions for an hour at a time, hopefully easing the distress of loneliness.

I’m responsible for competency-based training projects on sustainability and eco-entrepreneurship. With expertise in Participative Research, Systems Thinking, Life Cycle Thinking, Creative Innovation, and Facilitation Leadership, my work and studies are focused on Sustainable Development Goal 12: Responsible consumption and production.

I completed my master’s research on behavioural change towards sustainable actions, focusing on universities and circular economy. It’s clear that content at institutions isn’t meeting the demanded skills in the green industry, and this is affecting unemployment amongst young people. In 2020 there was an increase of over 120% in youth unemployment in the UK.

Circular Universities gives students, teachers and local enterprises the needed support and traineeship in green competences. How do we close this gap? Through an interactive community educational hub where beneficiaries get empowered and ready to tackle the challenges of a fast-changing environment in the green industry.

I am Beril, a sales and marketing expert experienced in corporate and technology companies. I am passionate about applying circular economy principles to the human consumption system. I am aware that 1 million tonnes of clothing are thrown out every year in the UK. Of that, 700,000 tonnes are collected for reuse and recycling, with the remainder sent to landfills or incinerated, at an estimated cost of £82m. The second-hand market is expected to grow fast, that’s why I am creating a second-hand platform where the sellers will be influencers and the buyers will be their followers. I am planning to use the power of influencers to boost second-hand purchases in the system

I live and work in Camden and studying locally with a new form of MBA, (a collaboration between a world-leading art school, Central Saint Martins in Kings Cross and business school, Birkbeck in Bloomsbury) with the aim of building new forms of business models that are fit for the future (think degrowth, resource efficiency, regenerative and circular economies fuelled by untapped talent such as neurodivergence).

As the sustainability revolution gathers pace post-COVID and as living costs significantly increase, more and more people recognise the need and opportunity to be more resourceful, efficient and sustainable in their daily lives. Many Camden residents want to be more sustainable in all they do but often don’t know how or feel confused by the jargon and myths. Meanwhile, there are many organisations locally doing great things with sustainability but this usually stays in-house.

My solution is to bring the local council, local businesses and local residents together to create a one-stop shop (virtual platform and pop-up events across the borough) to connect and create a movement (educate/inform/inspire/communicate in creative ways) for more sustainable actions in all that we do at home, at work and as business leaders and develop this movement to localise the SDGs and sustainable behaviours as a pilot for other boroughs and cities to model.