Event_
The Circular Economy
Jun 8, 2022 4:15 pm - 5:00 pm
AEST
As the focus on local climate action and the UN's Sustainable Development Goals intensifies, advancing the Circular Economy is vital and pertinent to creating a sustainable future.
The Circular Economy refers to a complete transformation of our current ‘make-use-dispose’ linear model of production and consumption. It aims to eliminate waste and pollution by introducing design improvements for the full life cycle of products and by re-circulating products and materials in use through innovative methods. It promises exciting opportunities for business through maximising the use of valuable and scarce resources, while contributing to innovation, growth and job creation.
Join us for the next webinar in our 'Business NOT as Usual' 2022 series as our panellists Zoltan Csaki and Dr Kar Mei Tang share with Dr Anna Young-Ferris the key drivers behind their passion and desire to reduce the environmental impacts of production and consumption, while enabling economic growth, through exploring the role that the circular economy plays in Australia today.
Moderator
Dr. Anna Young-Ferris, The University of Sydney Business School
Dr Anna Young-Ferris is a Lecturer of Accounting at the University of Sydney Business School. Her research interest lies at the intersection of responsible investment and sustainability accounting, and how investors translate this nascent information in their investment decisions. Anna is Academic Lead for the UN Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) and leading the strategic integration of the SDGs into teaching, research, and organisational practices across the Business School. She is passionate about transforming business narrative from the single-minded pursuit of profit to advancing a responsible business mindset where social and environmental impacts are understood as interconnected with financial impacts.
Panellists
Zoltan Csaki, Co-Founder, Citizen Wolf
Citizen Wolf is re-engineering the way clothes are made at scale to be both custom fit and carbon negative. Blending technology with an outsider ethos, the Citizen Wolf story began when co-founders Zoltan Csaki and Eric Phu opened their first (micro)factory in a Darlinghurst garage in April 2016. A flagship in Haymarket followed two years later and then in early 2019 they opened a state of the art factory in St Peters, purpose-built around their proprietary technology stack and single-piece production process. Distilled from 196 million data points, Citizen Wolf’s proprietary Magic Fit® technology replaces the measuring tape with simple biometrics to automate the process of tailoring from home. Producing only what they sell and sending nothing to landfill, Citizen Wolf produces 48% LESS carbon than the legacy fast fashion equivalent. They won Gold at the Good Design Awards (2019) and ‘Innovation Champion of the Year 2019’ (2019) at the National Retail Association Awards, as well as being named one of Vogue’s ‘Future Sixty’ agitators (2019) – “set to define the coming years” and #7 on RagTrader’s Tech 20 list of the most influential people in online fashion (2020).
Dr Kar Mei Tang, Chief Circular Economist at NSW Circular
Dr Kar Mei Tang was appointed Chief Circular Economist with NSW Circular in 2020, a government-funded body to fast-track NSW’s transition to the circular economy. Prior to this she was Executive Director, Circular Economy in the NSW Department of Planning, Industry and Environment and Environment Protection Authority, and was Director of Economic Policy in the NSW Department of Premier and Cabinet. Before joining the NSW public sector, she was Head of Policy and Research with the Australian Private Equity and Venture Capital Association (now Australian Investment Council). Kar Mei has a PhD in Economics and is the current Chair of NSW Women in Economics Network, Council Member of the Economic Society of Australia (NSW) and Advisory Council Member to the Gateway Bank.