to see industry leadership,” Plibersek said.  “I don’t want to be making these decisions for you, but if I don’t see enough movement in a year, then I will regulate.” Plibersek’s comments came at the launch of the Australian Fashion Council’s national clothing product stewardship scheme, called Seamless, which has been in the works for almost a year and a half.  The AFC worked with Charitable Recycling, Sustainable Resource Use, Queensland University of Technology, and Wrap, to bring the project to life.  AFC chief executive Leila Naja Hibri noted that the Seamless scheme aims to provide a way forward for the local fashion industry, and paints a vision of an industry centred on circularity, reuse, and recycling.  “Seamless sets out to bring all the parts of the clothing value chain together in a cohesive and coordinated way, [and guide] the fashion industry on its journey towards clothing circularity,” Naja Hibri said. The scheme will do this by supporting four major pillars: incentivising clothing design that is more durable, repairable, sustainable and recyclable; fostering circular business models based on reuse, repair, remanufacturing and rental; expanding clothing collection and sorting services to facilitate effective reuse and the recycling of non-wearable clothes back into new products; and, finally, encouraging these new behaviours in Australian consumers.  And while Seamless aims to support businesses on this journey, the buck will ultimately stop with them. “Seamless recognises that brands are responsible for garments’ entire lifecycle, from design  to end-of-life, and will therefore be funded by financial contributions paid by those brands on each item of new clothing that they place on the market,” Naja Hibri said.  The recommended cost sits at four cents per item under Seamless, a figure that Plibersek said wouldn’t lead to customer frustration, and would help to deal with the 13 million tonne carbon footprint the fashion industry creates each year. Clothing that is created with circular design attributes will see its cost lowered to three cents per item. These costs will fund Seamless’ operations, and will be paid by brands that sign up to the scheme: Big W, David Jones, Lorna Jane, Rip Curl, R.M. Williams and The Iconic are founding members.  Join the movement Claire Kneller, head of Wrap Asia Pacific, called Seamless a response to a “critical movement” within the fashion industry, and its consumer base, towards a more sustainable model.  “We currently have a very linear take-make-dispose kind of industry, where we are constantly having this churn of new clothing being made and being brought into the market, and people are buying too many clothes and hundreds of thousands of tonnes of clothes end up in landfill,” Kneller told Inside Retail.  “I think the critical thing to remember is that there is no silver bullet – there’s no one thing that we’re going to get everyone to do [that will solve this]. But, there are lots of things that people can do that will make a difference.” Kneller added that while younger generations have embraced  second-hand clothing, not everyone has this view, and that that is okay. The onus falls on the industry to make both customers’ shopping behaviour sustainable, and to incentivise “behavioural shifts” towards repair and reuse.  Exactly how this will be achieved has not been ironed out yet, but Kneller encouraged brands and retailers to sign up to the scheme as soon as possible to be a part of the solution, rather than be late to the party and leave the government to intervene.  “We launched with six foundation members, but that doesn’t limit anyone else from joining the scheme,” Kneller said.  “Join in this transition phase, because this is honestly where the real nitty-gritty will happen. We’ve made recommendations from the consortium about how the scheme should work, but this next phase is for brands and retailers to really dig into the details about how it’s going to work in practice, and have a look at how we match the priorities of the scheme with the priorities of their businesses. “If, in a year’s time, we don’t have the share of the market that we need, it’s going to get regulated. A cost of four cents under this scheme could be 40 cents per item under a government incentive, so it’s not just about hitting sustainable and environmental objectives, but also financial.”