Black Friday is approaching and my (non-work) email inbox is awash with generous retail discount codes. With Christmas approaching and inflation soaring, the sales look particularly tempting this year. After two years of pandemic, many customers will be taking the opportunity to buy new partywear, and have a good clear-out of old clothes. But what to do with them? Recycling is an obvious option, but the cost and logistics of this are substantial. It's great to see that Innovation UK have launched a whopping £15 million Circular Fashion Programme, including a £4 million competition for businesses to demonstrate innovative technologies, services and processes in the fashion-retail sector. With my retail branding hat on, I will be really interested to see what comes of this, and suspect some of my patents colleagues may feel the same way. Perhaps one day Green will be the new Black, and we'll have "Green Friday" instead...
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