Mango Committed 2021 Campaign Advances Strong Sustainability Goals

Models Felice Nova Noordhoff and Hamid Onifadé front Mango’s Committed Campaign SS 2021. Julia Sanchis Meseguer styles the couple in relaxed silhouettes, made of natural fabrics such as linen and cotton in terracotta and ecru tones. Ronan Gallagher [IG] photographed the campaign ./ Hair by Paolo Soffiatti; makeup by Egon Crivillers

The Barcelona-based global fashion retailer is raising its sustainability goals, most-certainly as a reflection of evolving consumer mindsets. Currently, 79% of the Mango assortment is “Committed”, meaning that they are recycled or have sustainable characteristics. By 2022, Mango hopes that 100% of every item meets this criteria, writes WWD.

Note that Mango is not asserting that these garments are fully-sustainable in every way. But the company does have an ambitious environmental agenda.

Mango targets include using 100 percent sustainable cotton and 50 percent recycled polyester in its collections by 2025. The retailer projects 100 percent of its cellulose fibers (for example, lyocell, viscose and modal, among others) to be of controlled origin and traceable by 2030.

As part of the commitment it made after signing the Fashion Pact, in relation to its diversity pillar, Mango will support the Asociación Vellmarí, founded in 1993 and headed by Manu San Félix, a biologist, scuba diver and National Geographic photographer and explorer. The nonprofit organization carries out conservation and education projects in the Posidonia Lab, a marine conservation project helping to protect posidonia (neptune grass), a plant species of the Mediterranean. “We believe that educating young children is the way to change the future for the better, so that they will learn to do well what we have done badly,” said San Félix.

Mango has continued to replace plastic bags with paper ones. Note that they are banned in several countries or cities internationally. The goal is to “progressively eliminate all the plastic bags it uses to distribute products throughout its production chain” in collaboration with its suppliers, the company said in its announcement Tuesday on sustainability.

In 2020 — impacted by COVID — Mango collected 42 tons of garments through its recycling project with Moda, a recycling program based in Spain for the fashion industry. The garments are collected in Mango stores for reuse, recycling and energy recovery. In 2020, Mango had 610 recycling points in stores in 11 countries. In 2021, the program will extend to six more countries adding more than 200 recycling points.

Archaeology in West Africa May Cause a Human Evolution, Research Rewrite

Archaeology in West Africa May Cause a Human Evolution, Research Rewrite AOC Sustainability

By Eleanor Scerri, Independent Group Leader, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History

Our species, Homo sapiens, rose in Africa some 300,000 years ago. The objects that early humans made and used, known as the Middle Stone Age material culture, are found throughout much of Africa and include a vast range of innovations.

Among them are bow and arrow technology, specialised tool forms, the long-distance transport of objects such as marine shells and obsidian, personal ornamentation, the use of pigments, water storage, and art. Although it is possible that other ancestors of modern humans contributed to this material culture in Africa, some of the earliest Middle Stone Age stone tools have been found with the oldest Homo sapiens fossils found so far.

The textbook view is that by around 40,000 years ago, the Middle Stone Age had largely ceased to exist in Africa. This was a milestone in the history of our species: the end of the first and longest lasting culture associated with humanity, and the foundation for all the subsequent innovations and material culture that defines us today.

Despite its central role in human history, we have little understanding of how the Middle Stone Age ended. Such an understanding could tell us how different groups were organised across the landscape, how they may have exchanged ideas and genes, and how these processes shaped the later stages of human evolution.

Unfortunately, vast swathes of Africa remain near complete blanks on the map when it comes to such deep prehistory, making it difficult to address these questions. Research has tended to focus on areas such as eastern Africa, where preservation is known to be high, understandably minimising risks and maximising gains. However, the emerging consensus that all of Africa played some role in human origins means that we can no longer afford to neglect vast regions of the continent if we want to reconstruct our evolution in a realistic framework.

For these reasons, my colleagues and I have been focusing on West Africa, one of the least well understood African regions for human evolution. And our recent work is validating earlier claims of a rich Middle Stone Age past.

Read on: Archaeology in West Africa May Cause a Human Evolution, Research Rewrite AOC Sustainability