Ep. 82 — REVISITED: What if Sustainability Was the Standard? with Roian Atwood

What if sustainability wasn’t a competitive edge, but the baseline for the entire denim industry?In this revisited conversation, Andrew sits down with sustainability expert Roian Atwood to look at what real progress in denim actually requires.A former Global Sustainability Director for Wrangler and Lee Jeans, Roian spent more than 15 years in the apparel industry developing and implementing sustainable technologies. He takes Andrew inside the development of Indigood, including the work that reduced water use in indigo dyeing by more than 90%, and explains what it takes to move an innovation from an experiment to something the industry can actually use.They also dig into cotton certification, regenerative agriculture, transparency, synthetics and microplastics, and a question Andrew comes back to again and again: Are we measuring actual results, or simply getting better at marketing sustainability?Roian’s answer for where the industry goes next is surprisingly simple: stop treating sustainability as a trade secret. Share what works, measure what doesn’t, and solve the problems together.Because sustainability shouldn’t be the thing that makes one company different. It should be the standard.Originally released as Episode 22 of Jeansland.Connect with Roian AtwoodPlease follow us on: Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn.