We are a new social startup named ColouReef and we are going to rethink and innovate the fashion industry. As you probably know, the fast fashion industry has a more negative impact on our environment and society than it does good. Being one of the most polluting ones, the industry emits more CO2 into the atmosphere than international flights and maritime shipping combined. Moreover, it is a water-consuming giant that is responsible for 20% of all industrial water pollution worldwide. Additionally, fast-fashion companies that produce garments in the global south, are profiting by exploiting local labour and nature. Fast fashion is the problem. Ever changing trends, consumerism and the fear of being left out, affects people psychologically, as fashion collections’ frequency jumped from 2 to 4 per year in 2000 to 12, 16 and sometimes 24 different collections per year in 2019. As a result, in 2014 to compare with 2000, on average people bought 60% more clothes and kept them just half as long. Consequently, this behaviour created another major problem of the industry – waste. Around 85% of the textile ends up in landfills or being burned, while barely 15% are recycled. In 2017 – 16.9 million tons of textile was produced, and only 2,6 million tons were recycled. The problem is, that many consumers in the global North are being held as hostages by the fast fashion trends, without many, if any, sustainable alternatives. This is our solution to the problems above: • To create a fashion rental service based on a circular economy, that allows customers to own different garments by paying a monthly subscription. In this way we will be able to reduce the impact of the fast fashion while allowing people an opportunity to change their outfit and style more often. • We will offer clothes ONLY from sustainable companies, which care about our planet and everyone living on it. Meaning that clothes will need to be produced sustainably and ecologically and/or contain recycled fabrics, as well as not to exploit labour within their supply chain. • Damaged and worn out clothes will be returned back to the clothing brand to upcycle or will be recycled and/or upcycled locally by ColouReef. This way we will fight together the problem of enormous waste caused by the industry. • We will change the habits of the consumers, by providing an alternative to own and wear sustainable clothing for a period of time instead of owning cheap and vastly produced fashion garments. At the same time, we will educate our customers about the damages that the textile industry is doing to our environment. • As the name of our company implies, we want to help to protect coral reefs that are on the verge of extinction. Coral reefs are a vital part of the whole underwater ecosystem. Warming ocean and ocean acidification are two of the main reasons why corals are bleaching and dying around the world. Besides our effort to transform the fashion industry into a more sustainable version of it, we will also support selected NGOs that are fighting against coral extinction. We are looking for people thinking in the same way, seeing the problems and wanting to solve them by disrupting the fashion industry. If you are interested and would like to know more, contact us on info@coloureef.com Informative links: https://www.textilemountainfilm.com https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61CdttBG3n0 https://www.checinternational.org/clothing-waste-and-fast-fashion-in-2020/