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Christian Smith works for the global fashion retail site ASOS, which has over 13.6 million unique visitors a month in over 160 countries. He is their Corporate Social Responsibility manager and advises the company on its greenhouse emissions, its environmental impact and where there is room for improvement. He also spoke recently at our Forward-thinking Fashion event about innovation in sustainable fashion:
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Meeting Christian, I was bowled over by his passion for making the fashion industry more ethical and sustainable, and also how he is able to bridge the worlds of academic research and commerce so easily. He has completed an MSc in Environment and Sustainable Development at UCL and used our corporate social responsibility collections in our Social Science reading room for his research. In turn, he’s able to bring this information to life and apply it in his work with ASOS.
As background research, I found the following statement on the company’s website on their stance for sustainable business:
“We have a responsibility to our supply partners, customers, colleagues and shareholders to ensure that ASOS products are produced in acceptable conditions and in an ethical way.”
In 2008 it adopted the Ethical Trade Initiative (ETI) Base Code throughout its global supply chain and it also has an ethical code of conduct which it implements through audits of its factories and suppliers across the world. There is also the ASOS Green Room where you can find pioneering fashion and beauty brands with a conscience.
Getting back to Christian’s research, I was interested in how Christian has approached his work at the Library. We have amazing journals, magazines and books on this area and I was wondering how he came across them. He relies on his twitter community to find the latest reports and news in the sector, rather than traditional catalogues or sites like Amazon.
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Previously published on blogs.bl.uk and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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Photo credit: Istockphoto.com