Milan hosted the first World Oceans Week, held on 8-12 June, 2022, while celebrating the World Oceans Day 2022, on June, 8th. Within the initiative the city organized events, activities, and educational workshops to explain the value of marine ecosystems and make everyone feel responsible about the importance to protect them.
The aim was to raise the city's awareness on issues related to a sustainable “blue economy”, an expression created to sensitize and involve citizens, players and investors to actively protect the seas and oceans, and involve citizens to improve and expand knowledge of this natural heritage.
Within this program, they also held “Ocean Talk” organized by One Ocean Foundation together with Giorgio Armani involving experts, scientists, universities and opinion leaders discussing, learning and getting involved in supporting this cause.
One Ocean Foundation is a global organization founded in 2017 with the aim to accelerate and find solutions to the problems of the oceans by inspiring international leaders, companies, institutions and single individuals promoting a sustainable “blue economy” meant to defend and spread the knowledge of marine ecosystems.
Within the talk the concept of blue economy emerged as a relatively new theme and its importance was also connected to Made in Italy, excellence, beautiful and well done product.
“It would be impossible to safeguard the ocean without the support of the world of enterprise and finance,” said Stefano Poguz, scientific committee president, One Ocean Foundation.
Rossella Ravagli, sustainability director, Giorgio Armani, underlined how important it is conducting business with a purpose.
“Within the frame of the 2030 deadline, many players are involved in defining and reaching specific goals that can help them lower their emissions. When Armani Group defined its sustainable strategy it also included the aim to protect the oceans, in particular trying to understand how fashion companies can lower their impact on the seas as, indirectly, also fashion brands are causing this and shpuld do their part in solving it,” continued Ravagli specifying what decisions they took.
“We have also fixed international validated targets like, for instance, the reduction of CO2 emissions - which is important for us but also within our value chain. We have also set some targets for the reduction of single use of plastic in packaging for B2B and are now studying how to apply it for B2C,” she continued.
As in fashion it is fundamental to guarantee transparency and traceability, Giorgio Armani also wants to create a digital identity card for each product in order to make them become transparent and “speaking”.
“Right now, the planet is no longer able to regenerate itself. For this, it is important to be able to pass from an extractive era to a regenerative era. Clients buy values, not products, and this has to do with both tangible and intangible values. For this, we have to continue working hard on this.”
Among other speakers, they also presented some innovative start-ups that could help to amplify the ocean preservation targets of One Oceans Foundation.
Among them,Twin One is a software through which they can create a digital twin–from design to marketing, including the Metaverse–and create a realistic twin of the product without actually producing it.
Glac-Up is a startup with the objective of safeguarding and enhancing the Alpine glaciers. According to the European Environment Agency, by 2100, 89% of the volume of Alpine glaciers will no longer exist. The new benefit company has thought that the only possible solution to stop their melting in the immediate term is to cover them during summer with special blankets that each year manage to save a layer up to 3.5 meters deep.
The young company proposes that individuals and companies invest, 'adopting' square meter by square meter, portions of the glacier, to purchase the indispensable "blankets," place and retrieve them at the end of summer, replace them when they become ineffective.
Clean Ocean Technology has developed a system to avoid mass fiber release in the ocean when washed. They designed Fiberlink, a device that can be installed in any productive system and through which they re-engineer blends to prevent shredding in the washing machine.
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