The Australian cotton industry – improving on-farm sustainability
Date
22 October 2019
Venues |
Local Time |
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Adelaide Waite Campus – B101-FG-R00-SmallWICWest |
12:00 pm |
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Armidale – B55-FG-R00-Small |
12:30 pm |
|
Bribie Island – B01-FG-Small |
11:30 pm |
|
Brisbane St Lucia QBP – Room 3.323 |
11:30 pm |
|
Canberra Black Mountain – Discovery Lecture Theatre |
12:30 pm |
|
Irymple (See Natalie Strickland) |
12:30 pm |
|
Narrabri – Conference Room |
12:30 pm |
|
Perth Floreat B46-F2-R22 Leeuwin Conference Room |
09:30 am |
|
Sandy Bay (Hobart) – B2-F1-R24 River View Room |
12:30 pm |
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Toowoomba – Media Lab Room |
11:30 pm |
|
Townsville (see Liz Do) |
11:30 pm |
|
Werribee (Melbourne) – B01-FG-R02 |
12:30 pm |
Abstract
The Australian cotton industry is committed to improving on-farm sustainability. However, as its raw material travels through the ‘value adding’ stages in the globalised textile and apparel industries, it is uncertain how ‘sustainable value’ is transferred into the final product. The aim of this research is to identify how the Australian cotton industry can understand where value is created, as well as opportunities to create sustainable value along its supply chain.
To achieve this a tailored Australian Cotton Sustainable Value Chain Analysis (ACSVCA) was developed. This ACSVCA involves ‘walking’ the Australian cotton supply chain with a product from start to finish, conducting interviews with value chain stakeholders in order to identity what sustainable value is, how it is created, who it benefits both in and beyond the chain (such as wider society, the environment, consumers, local communities) and where future opportunities to create further value may lie. The ACSVCA was tested through a pilot study of a connected niche Australian cotton value chain involving seven participants.
This talk shares the preliminary results from the pilot study which demonstrate the insights that can be achieved using the tailored ACSVCA method, such as Australian cotton’s sustainable value proposition, as well as key opportunities for future progress.
Bio
Zoe Mellick is a PhD candidate and teacher in Fashion at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia. Zoe has been involved as a research assistant in two research projects examining the Australian cotton value chain (2016-18). She also has over a decade of experience working in retail with Australian fashion brands.
Zoe’s educational and professional experience allows her to work at the interface of fashion, sustainability, retail and value chain research. Her PhD research, co-funded by Cotton Research and Development Corporation (CRDC) and an Australian Government Research Training Stipend, focuses on understanding opportunities to create sustainable value along the apparel and textile supply chain