🌱 Our 'Open Mic' Night With Nudie Jeans: Can consumer brands ever truly champion responsible consumption?
50 friends, a few beers, some fun film pictures and one facilitated 'open mic' later...
Happy Monday! Every Monday we suit up and get serious - digging into a climate topic, rounding up the past week’s Good(s) News and sharing updates from across FTF, so you’re never out of the loop.
They say videos set to classical music say 1000 words, so we’ll just leave this here…
Yup, that’s right. We collaborated with NUDIE JEANS (!!!), hosted an event at their London HQ, welcomed the friends of Following the Footprints through the door, and had the time of our lives.
Let’s dig in…
If you will - add your name here. NY based brand? Email us!
> In Focus
24th July 2024: Our ‘Open Mic’ Night With Nudie Jeans
Can consumer brands ever truly be champions of responsible consumption? That’s the kind of low-key question we like to throw to a room of consumer brands and sustainability professionals. This isn’t your average industry mixer.
Let’s set the scene.
It’s a Wednesday evening in Soho, London, and there are 50 people gathered in the gorgeous Nudie Jeans flagship store, surrounded by jeans, sewing machines and cool tiling. Organisations like City Harvest, Wildfarmed, Citizens of Soil, Ecoswap, Seismic, BELU, Zevero, betternotstop, ClimatePartner, Arda Biomaterials, BBC, MyEmissions, Belazu and more are in the mix. You’re sipping a delicious Dalston’s Soda, or maybe a Gipsy Hill IPA, or perhaps trying The Uncommon’s crisp white, all while coyly nibbling on crisps and crackers.
It’s hot. The kind of heat we have come completely unaccustomed to in England (and if we weren’t so vitamin D deficient we would count ourselves lucky to say that). The climate crisis is, of course, the reason why FTF even exists. The timing isn’t accidental - one week later, on 1st August, it was Earth Overshoot Day.
The clock strikes 8, the room hushes. Leone introduces Following the Footprints and points out the team in the room. Laura highlights why we think our new MITIGATE database can help brands be better consumers themselves. Gareth (Nudie’s charismatic UK & Ireland General Manager) inspires the crowd with the story of Nudie Jeans and their mission to ‘create tomorrow’s vintage’ - a nod to why, to us, they’re the perfect partner for a conversation like this.
Scene set.
Now, it’s time to turn the (figurative) mic back to the room - ‘Can consumer brands ever truly be champions of responsible consumption?’.
Introduce yourself before you speak, we’ll stop you at 1 minute, questions back to the room are just as good as answers, brand examples wanted.
Here’s exactly what everyone said…. Just kidding. Sorry! Chatham House rules, and when we say you had to be there you really did (kudos to those of you who spotted the community tickets we hid in a couple of newsletters).
Ok fine, a sneak peak. Some topics we covered:
Whose responsibility is it to educate the consumer to consume less?
Most brands are aiming to scale - is there such a thing as scaling responsibly? Where does degrowth fit in this?
How far can new innovations get us? We heard stories of recyclable pouches, helpful browser extensions, working with farmers to roll out regenerative practices.
What habits persist that we should…bin? Limited editions were one, food waste was another.
How are brands themselves learning? Which organisations are educating them on topics like food waste - as one example?
The Consensus
We didn’t come to one united answer - a show of hands at the end suggested that, yes, consumer brands truly can be the champions we need. Doubt persisted. Everyone was in agreement about one thing however - this conversation needs to continue, and another Following the Footprints Open Mic is in our near future.
A HUGE massive like literally ginormous thank you to all our partners - Gareth, George, Paola and Bettina at Nudie Jeans for saying yes way back in May, Leonie at Dalston’s Soda for the delicious soft drinks, Florence at The Uncommon for the refreshing rosé and wine, Sam at Gipsy Hill for the very popular beers, and the whole FTF team who travelled in, took pictures, bought ice and spoke.
Want to join future FTF events? Add your name to our invite list here…
> Last week in consumer goods x climate…
The Good(s) News
Up and coming brands…
🎯 Pizzarova launched their reusable pizza boxes, allowing customers to take pizzas home and return the boxes within 7 days without any additional fees. These boxes are currently being tested at their Gloucester Road site, with plans to expand to all other stores by the end of the year.
🎯 Nice released their 2024 impact report, highlighting major milestones including achieving B Corp status and reducing carbon intensity by 11% through their work with Zevero.
🎯 GOB announced the launch of their first product: earplugs made from mycelium. Recognizing the need for an alternative to PVC and polyurethane used in plastic earplugs, GOB aims to replace the 40 billion earplugs manufactured annually with a fully compostable version.
Bigger organisations…
⭐ Morrisons is expanding its partnership with Too Good To Go to offer 'Surprise Bags' of surplus food at reduced prices from 930 Daily convenience stores. This initiative follows the success of their trial, which saved over 40,000 Surprise Bags.
⭐ Walmart has partnered with Denali to integrate depackaging technology at over 1 400 locations, separating food from packaging materials, to improve organic content recovery by over 60% and reduce waste by 12%. Additionally, Walmart is piloting Agritask’s data analytics to improve produce sourcing, ensuring supply, reducing waste, and maintaining fresh produce quality.
Industry news…
⚡️The UN has introduced recommendations to combat misinformation, disinformation, and hate speech, emphasizing their dangers to democracy, and undermining public health and climate action. The new Global Principles for Information Integrity urge coordinated efforts from governments, tech companies, and other stakeholders to create safer information environments.
Want good news sooner? We post our top 5 stories every Friday on LinkedIn! If your consumer goods brand has good news to share - email us!
> In case you missed it
Want more? Here’s what’s happening across FTF at the moment…
We grabbed a box of tissues - so many of our community shared their love for this little newsletter, and we’re really grateful. In particular:
Catherine from The Good Crowd recommended us:
George from Zevero gave us a shoutout in The Grumpy Optimists (go subscribe! They’re GREAT!):
Nicole from Raye the Store shared how she was inspired after our Nudie x FTF event:
Missed our events roundup for August? Check it out here.
Last Thursday in The Check-Out we spoke to Joy Stevenson, B Corp Project Manager at MPM Group. See her answers to our burning questions here.
That’s it for today!
Want more? Hang tight for ‘The Check-Out’ this Thursday for the latest brands in our basket. In the meantime, if you have any topics that you would like us to dig into, ping us an email on info@followingthefootprints.com to say hi!
Much love,
Team FTF
 | A guest post by
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Great event! Awesome people and good conversation. Consumer brands truly can be the champions we need! :)
LOVE the video and love you all!