How Accessibility and Awareness Can Catapult Circular Change
Although sustainability is increasingly becoming a C-suite consideration and role, employees at any level—along with consumers—have the power to enact change.
In a panel at Sourcing Journal x Rivet Sustainability LA moderated by Sourcing Journal editor-in-chief Peter Sadera, executives from Cotton Incorporated and Zappos.com spoke about how to make a difference regardless of position and their efforts to make circularity more accessible to both companies and consumers. Crossing the divide between aspiration and action can be challenging, but they stressed the benefit of focusing on core competencies.
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“A great place to start is really just looking at your brand DNA, your brand ethos, what your key value props are and working backward to come up with solutions that work best for your business, your customers,” said Anna Copilevitz, lead program manager, Zappos for Good at Zappos.com.
Kim Kitchings, senior vice president, consumer marketing at Cotton Incorporated, suggested that companies begin by identifying or addressing a need. For instance, Cotton Incorporated’s Blue Jeans Go Green program was sparked by the problem of textile waste in landfills. The initiative provides a path for used cotton-rich denim items, recycling them into insulation for homes, meal kits and more. Since its start in 2006, Blue Jeans Go Green has collaborated with more than 500 partners on used denim collection programs.
“What we’re really hoping to do is to create a movement for the entire textile industry,” said Kitchings. “We just happen to be doing it one pair of jeans at a time.”
Among these partners is Zappos.com, which operates a take-back program as part of its Zappos for Good platform. Blue Jeans Go Green fit with the retailer’s values, including “do more with less.”
The panelists stressed the importance of both leveraging internal capabilities and strengths and finding the right partners who fill in the gaps with different expertise—even if they are outside the industry. For Zappos, this meant tapping into its North Star: customer service. “Ultimately, it was another way for us to better serve our customers,” said Anna. “We’re very customer centric…If they’re coming to us to buy new things, we wanted to provide them with solutions to move out of their old things.”
While many of Blue Jeans Go Green’s partners operate take-back programs in stores, Zappos offers mail-in collections, using its existing alliance with UPS for return labels and shipping. Since Blue Jeans Go Green is a nonprofit program, there is no fee for the partner to participate. They just need to cover the costs of getting collected garments to the sorting facility in Arizona.
With extended producer legislation coming down the pipeline—including the newly signed California Responsible Textile Recovery Act—creating circular paths for merchandise is becoming compulsory for companies. A critical means toward meeting these requirements and boosting circularity is consumer engagement.
To convince shoppers to recycle instead of tossing used clothing, Blue Jeans Go Green was designed to be convenient. Partners may also incentivize participation through discounts or rewards. Copilevitz noted that although there is an investment tied to getting a circular initiative like a take-back or trade-in program going, the benefit is a bump in customer loyalty earned through building trust in the brand. This consumer confidence partly stems from the product quality needed to enable circularity.
The messaging must also be compelling, and awareness is key. When she first began managing the Zappos for Good program with Cotton Incorporated, Copilevitz revamped the website to better communicate the Blue Jeans Go Green story, and she has worked to integrate it across the retailer’s marketing to support participation.
For the first time since Covid, Blue Jeans Go Green will be returning to college campuses, helping it reach the 18- to 24-year-olds who are more heavily invested in circularity. Educating even younger individuals, Cotton Incorporated has developed coursework on recycling for school-age students. It is also turning to TikTok and Meta platforms to bring the message to consumers through influencer marketing.
Another best practice is touching consumers’ emotions through storytelling, noted Copilevitz. Kitchings also sees an opportunity to “change the narrative” around circularity. “If we marketed sustainability like we do our brands, and we made it aspirational, we made it sexy…maybe that would move it forward,” said Kitchings.
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