The Waste & Resources Action Programme (WRAP) has announced the four finalists of the inaugural Sustainable Clothing Action Plan (SCAP) design award yesterday (4 March).

The SCAP Extending the Life of Clothes Design Award (SCAP ELC Award), launched in October, challenges designers to address the key reasons for garment failure and find ways to ensure longer life times, while providing fashionable and sellable products.

It was launched after WRAP found that extending the active life of clothes by nine months could reduce the carbon, water and waste footprints by 20-30 per cent each, and save around £5 billion worth of the resources that are used to supply, launder and dispose of clothing.

Following a three-month submission period, WRAP has now selected four finalists for the final judging round:

• Gayle Atkins, from Northbrook College Sussex/Marbella Design Academy, whose submission focuses on designing multi-purpose clothing (i.e. a dress that can be transformed into a bag);
• Nicholas Fellows, from the London College of Fashion, who proposed a children’s wear concept with dissolvable stitches so that consumers can increase the item’s size to accommodate a growing child;
• Rhiannon Hunt, a graduate of Chelsea College of Art and Design, whose idea focuses on detachable fastenings that allow users to adjust the size of their clothing; and
• Valerie Goode, creator of sustainable fashion label Kitty Ferreira Ltd, whose service-focused concept offers made-to-measure tailoring for items that are easy to mix and match and can be worn for different occasions.

The four finalists will now face a a panel of judges made up of industry professionals and academics to discuss their submissions and explain how they would further develop their ideas.

Submissions will then be judged on four criteria: the design process; environmental benefits; development and commercial potential; and innovation.

The winner will receive £5,000 and the opportunity to develop their idea for a commercial market.

‘Encouraging appetite’ for innovative thinking

Making the announcement yesterday, Marcus Gover, Director at WRAP, said: “Selecting our finalists was not easy as the quality of entries was extremely high.

“It is very encouraging to see the appetite for this kind of thinking in our sector – we need this new approach to designing clothes to be embraced if we’re to move towards a model that makes better use of our raw material and gets the greatest value from them.”

One of the judges on the award panel, Tamsin Lejeune, CEO of the Ethical Fashion Forum and online trade and networking platform SOURCE, said: “The ELC Design Award is an important initiative by WRAP to raise awareness and increase engagement with the pressing issue of textile waste and the pollution that results from it.

“We have been impressed by the quality of entries and the ingenuity of the designers, who have created some very innovative solutions to complex problems.”

Sustainable Clothing Action Plan

The awards form part of the SCAP 2020 Commitment, which was launched by WRAP in 2013 to encourage organisations from across the textiles industry to reduce the environmental footprint of clothing through supply, reuse and recycling.

It followed on from a 2012 WRAP report, ‘Valuing Our Clothes – The true cost of how we design, use and dispose of clothes in the UK’, which found that a third of the million tonnes of clothes supplied on the UK market each year ‘end up in landfill when they’re finished with’ and that around £30 billion worth of clothes are unused in people’s wardrobes.

Find out more about the SCAP ELC Awards.