Bundespreis Ecodesign
"The BUNDESPREIS ECODESIGN promotes successful design that combines quality in a holistic sense with innovation and aesthetics. Quality that includes ecological and social issues as a natural basis for design and shows feasible solutions for society."
Friederike von Wedel-Parlow, jury member
At the 2016 award ceremony, Friederike von Wedel-Parlow held the laudation for prizewinner Climatex.
Laudatio Climatex
Montag 28.11. 2016
I am very pleased to present an award in the product category today - from the fashion and textile sector.
This area of fashion and textiles is of particular importance: every 6 employees worldwide are active in this field - mostly under precarious, health-threatening circumstances and paid far below a living wage. Over 7000 chemicals are used in this industry worldwide, a third of all chemicals at all. Fashion and textiles, as the largest single industry, is thus responsible for the pollution of our rivers and seas. Recent studies also show that the abrasion of synthetic textiles through washing and wearing alone is the third largest polluting factor in the oceans after plastic bags and microplastics, and that they thus enter the food chain. A rethink, especially in the field of fashion and textiles, is therefore inevitable.
I am therefore particularly pleased to present here today a textile innovation that has found a comprehensive answer to this problem. Not only does it succeed in creating transparency along the entire supply chain - all ingredients are known and positively evaluated, i.e. safe for humans and the environment throughout the entire manufacturing, use and recovery process of the products. The Cradle to Cradle Gold certified product thus answers the requirements of the Greenpeace Detox Campaign, which has significantly set the industry in motion. And it goes beyond that: the materials can be separated according to type and returned to the cycle. Not only is this a future option, it is current practice, the cycle is already closed.
However, the makers of this product would not put all this in the foreground, but rather the performance and special properties of the material innovation. Indeed, the weaving technology, the special composition of the fibers and the finishing creates a climate-controlling effect that offers the user a special comfort and well-being, whether it is an office chair, car seat or shoe. This is innovation that inspires - and we want much more of it: Climatex.
