Congratulations to the ‘Hemp Seeds’ team, who won our Green is the New Black competition! Each member of the team will win a €50 voucher to use at a sustainable fashion retailer of their choice. Just in time for Christmas!

Green is the New Black is a short evening course in sustainable fashion, hosted by BiOrbic. Over four workshops, students learned about the evolution of fast fashion, its production chain and environmental impacts, the politics around fashion and what can be done to address fast fashion on an individual basis. 20 students took part in the course which ran through October.

Guest speakers included researchers and industry experts, as well as some of BiOrbic’s own centre members, including Hannah Gould, Tricia Walker, Jessica Chambers and Melanie Baur. The project was conceived after BiOrbic PhD student, Manuel Bruch, had a conversation with his housemate about the problems with fast fashion. Manuel used this as inspiration to develop a full engagement project idea which was then funded through BiOrbic’s Bespoke EPE fund. He, along with other centre members, then developed the course programme.

Social Media Competition for SFI Science Week

After learning about sustainable fashion, our students were able to put their new knowledge into practice by entering the Green is the New Black competition. In teams, they developed social media campaigns to engage people with sustainable fashion. The campaigns were posted on BiOrbic’s instagram throughout SFI Science Week.

The campaigns were then judged according to level of engagement, relevance, accuracy and creativity. All three teams did exceptionally well, bringing new audiences to the channel. However, the Hemp Seeds team had a slight edge, with a multi-pronged campaign that took advantage of the posts, stories and reels to inspire people to ‘rediscover their wardrobe in 8 days’.

Well done to all our students and speakers!