News Archive

When gender comes into play

Two portraits from the Local Wisdom project. Photo credits: Kerry Dean and Paige Green. The second article from CHANGE with gender as a main focus has been published, authored by Kate Fletcher: Gender, Fashion, Sustainability in Clothing Cultures. Text: Ingun Grimstad Klepp and Tone S. Tobiasson Kate begins the article with a review of what…

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Defibering the future

The Wasted Textiles project took the trip to Norsk Tekstilgjenvinning in Sandefjord, and were privy to an introduction to one of the few recycling projects that can actually have something to offer, as the founder Pål Erik Haraldsen has understood the limitations and that it may sometimes be wise to say ‘no’. Photo, behind, from…

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Dutch textile policy envisions consumption reductions and production and imports quotas.

SIFO’s advocacy work is influencing international public policy, step by step. The Dutch Circular Textile Policy Program for 2025-2030, released in December 2024, includes measures to reduce the volume of raw materials used in textiles, including the reduction of incentives that stimulate consumption (low price, advertising, sales), measures to help consumers to make sustainable choices,…

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Telling it like it is: Lambasting consumer-facing Higg-based label

In a newly published article from Consumption Research Norway SIFO at Oslo Metropolitan University, Who Can Stop the Greenwashing, penned by Ingrid Haugsrud and Ingun Grimstad Klepp, the authors literally lambaste how the Sustainable Apparel Coalition (now Cascale) misused outdated and faulty data for their launch of a Higg (now Worldly) consumer-facing sustainability label. In…

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Hello from Melbourne!

In September 2024, we left autumnal Oslo behind to embark on a research exchange at the University of Melbourne with the Critical Fashion Studies research collective. This group, led by Professor Natalya Lusty and Dr. Harriette Richards, brings together fashion scholars, practitioners, and industry members to advance research on sustainability, ethics, and innovation in fashion.…

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Clothing Care

“And he don’t even care for clothes” sang Nina Simone in “My Baby Just Cares For Me” which is how the chapter “Clothing Care” opens in the new, impressive and comprehensive book “The Palgrave Handbook of Sustainability in Fashion”.  Clothing researchers in SIFO use the Nina Simone quote to discuss the connection between “care[ing]  about…

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Amazing international win!

Time to celebrate! Traditional costumes, the craftmanship and social practice from Norway, and summer farming (seter and fäbod) in both Norway and Sweden are now on UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list! This gives an unexpected boost to the Amazing Grazing project and puts some recent and older publications in a new light. First and foremost…

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Photo booth boots possible change

As part of the SIFO presence at the recent Friluftsliv conference, Kate Fletcher, ran a “Photo Booth” to record the thoughts (in a thought bubble!) of conference delegates about clothing and nature. Delegates responses ranged from desirable practical qualities of clothes for use outdoors, to the feelings that clothes imbue; and from aspiration about the…

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Announcing the publication of Decentering Durability: Decarbonizing and Decolonizing Ideas and Practices of Long-Lasting Clothes

Just published in Fashion Theory, an article exploring durability through a decolonial lens. The research it builds on was conducted as part of the LASTING project, led by our very own Kirsi Laitala and funded by the Research Council of Norway. The article, written by Kate Fletcher and Anna Fitzpatrick, is open access. Please share…

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New article published in the WOOLUME project

Big congrats in order! WOOLUME recently got some more good news: ‘We are pleased to inform you that “Thermoregulation and Soil Moisture Management in Strawberry Cultivation Mulched with Sheep Wool” by Jan Broda, Andrzej Gawlowski, Monika Rom, Tomasz Kukulski, Katarzyna Kobiela-Mendrek has been published in Applied Sciences and is available online’:Due to its beneficial and…

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Designa: Seeing design with new eyes

The Wool museum and universitty in Covilhã, Portugal hosted the Designa conference, where Clothing Research’s Ingun Grimstad Klepp and Kate Fletcher were both key note speakers. Here is their report: Kate and I felt very honoured and privileged to be able to open this conference together. Both the importance of the environmental crisis and of…

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Thematic session at PLATE 2025

Join us for a thematic session at PLATE conference in Denmark (July 2025). 2025 is the last year for the CHANGE project and one of the closing activities is a thematic session at the Product Lifetimes and the Environment (PLATE) conference. The thematic session on “Rebound effects and critical views on product durability”, co-chaired by…

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Clothing Research at ESA 2024

The European Sociological Association’s main biennial event this year took the clothing researchers to Porto! When: 27th – 30th August 2024Where: University of Porto, Portugal Set on the beautiful backdrop of Porto, the main themes of the 16th ESA conference were “Tension, Trust and Transformation”. About 20 researchers from Consumption Research Norway SIFO participated in…

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New PhD makes a splash: The function of the laundry and the limitation in self-reported data

Chalmers University In the heart of Gothenburg hosted the defense for Erik Klint on September 6th. Klint’s PhD, consisting of 5 published articles and some additional published material, was discussed with professional curiosity and benevolence, and the atmosphere was positive throughout. Author: Ingun Grimstad Klepp It is not easy to work interdisciplinary, but as the…

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TPR brought forward in What Fuels Fashion? Report

In the recently published report, What Fuels Fashion?, issued by Fashion Revolution, Consumption Research Norway SIFO’s suggestion for a Targeted Producer Responsibility method has received substantial attention alongside the Plastic Elephant report. In addition, the ruling by the Norwegian Consumer Authority against the Higg consumer-facing label also is brought forward. All in all, What Fuels…

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SIFO-paper presented at Degrowth conference: More durable, or fewer products?

Three days of multidisciplinary perspectives to overcome our society’s obsession with economic growth, sounds like a good way to round out the month of June? Obviously…  Consumption Research’s Irene Maldini took the trip to Spain to talk about durability’s role in our obsession with growing the textile sector, perhaps one of the sectors that really…

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Letter sent to the EU Council

Tanja Gotthardsen, a Danish anti-greenwashing specialist, Continual, and member of the advisory board for textiles at the Danish Consumer Council, Forbrugerrådet Tænk, has together with Professor Ingun Grimstad Klepp and Tone S. Tobiasson, penned a letter to the EU Council ahead of their vote on Green Claims Directive. If the EU’s Green Claims directive is…

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On clothing and … love!

June 3rd, 2024, Ana Neto graduated as a Doctor in Design at the Lisbon School of Architecture, University of Lisbon with her research on “Usership in Fashion: A Grounded Theory on Wearer-Clothing Relationships”, which she carried out under the supervision of João Batalheiro Ferreira (IADE) and Gabriela Forman (ULisbon) SIFO researchers Kate Fletcher and Irene Maldini…

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TPR gets some serious airplay

Volumes, policy measures and Targeted Producer Responsibility all fitted into discussions the week before Easter, where some of us jumped back and forth between Webex, Zoom and Teams, recordings and live webinars. The take-aways are that several policy tools are mired in antiquated ideas that seriously need updating from research, and that the conversations around…

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Fashionscapes for Transformation: EU addresses plastification and a just transition

The main point made during EcoAge and MEP Alessandra Moretti’s joint event in the EU Parliament was to link the increased plastification in the fashion sector with social injustice upstream and downstream in the value-chain. Livia Firth, founder of EcoAge and moderator of Fashionscapes for Transformation, has relentlessly these last months hammered in the point that…

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Exploring design and nature

A new, limited-edition publication, edited by Kate Fletcher, Research Professor at SIFO, and Louise St. Pierre, Associate Professor at Emily Carr University in Vancouver, has been published, exploring design places, practices and senses – all in the context of how we relate to nature. According to the book-blurb, Nature Relations (Occasional Press, 2023) explores light,…

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EcoAge Roundtable in Brussels: A fair phase-out of fossil fuels from the fashion industry

The ethical issues are often discussed separate from environmental issues, it is high time they are discussed in the same room. Therefore, a huge thanks to EcoAge who arranged an important roundtable, and in the Parliament in Brussels, with the heading Calling for a fair phase-out of fossil fuels from the fashion industry. Livia Firth,…

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The plastic elephant in the room: Who dares to talk about it?

In the Consumption Research Norway SIFO report The plastic elephant: Overproduction and synthetic fibers in sustainable textile strategies we examine national, international and corporate strategies for sustainable textiles to understand whether, and if so, how they include the problem of increased production volumes based on synthetic materials that can be referred to as the ‘plastic…

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Productive project publishes again

The scientific article Sound Absorption of Tufted Carpets Produced from Coarse Wool of Mountain Sheep has been published in Journal of Natural Fibers. The article is co-authored by Jan Broda, Katarzyna Kobiela-Mendrek, Marcin Bączek, Monika Rom and Ingvild Espelien, and is an important contribution to the study of wool’s properties. As part of the ongoing…

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Garbage talk: Easily outdated, but difficult to date

Text by Tone Skårdal Tobiasson The results from the Wasted Textiles pilot study, executed by four Master-students Camilla Sunde (UiO), Eva Hovda (NTNU), Siri Vestengen (NTNU) and Saeid Sheikhi (Høyskolen Kristiania) has now been published. Avfall Norge and their summer program REdu, were able to get the pilot financed by The Norwegian Retail Environmental Fund,…

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PhD Masterclass on Wardrobe Research

13th of April this year an online PhD masterclass was conducted within the scope of the CHANGE work package 5. The masterclass was online and involved the currently eight PhD students working with the wardrobe method or closely related methods and had the purpose of facilitating exchange of shared methodological implications, involved issues of interest,…

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Reflections from PLATE

We attended the PLATE-conference in Helsinki with 7 papers, you can read more here. The PLATE conference has over the years brought together very important profiles and institutions that all work with the concept of design for longevity, the use phase of products, systems and processes around products, and this was also the case in…

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Sufficiency on the agenda

Sufficiency advocates from different sectors came together on May 4th at the Sufficiency Summit. Co-organised by Sciences Po (France) and University of South Australia, and chaired by Dr. Yamina Saheb and Professor David Ness, the Summit brought together governments, NGOs, and academics advocating for sufficiency in transport, the built environment, food, and clothing from different…

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Microplastics or microfibers: Does anyone really get what this is about?

OPINION: What we do know, is that all synthetic clothing and materials, sooner or later, will become microplastics, a «time-delayed» pollution bomb. And thus, they will ultimately become a problem for seabirds, and us. A new report on microfibers in waterways is gaining attention, as it claims the results show more natural fibers than synthetic ones,…

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Winter wheat + wool pellets work well

It turns out that Polish mountain sheep wool can be successfully used as a nitrogen-rich, organic fertilizer in organic farming. This enables utilization of coarse wool, which is not suitable for textile processing, to be used and lead to zero-waste from wool shearing. “Utilisation of waste wool from mountain sheep as fertiliser in winter wheat…

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Critical background paper on PEF for apparel and footwear

This week saw the publication of a critical background paper on concerns surrounding the Product Environmental Footprint Category Rules for Apparel and Footwear from a consortium representing the collaborative international research project Wasted Textiles at Consumption Research Norway SIFO at Oslo Metropolitan University. The consortium were asked to supply more background information to the EU Commission after a knowledge sharing meeting January 25 hosted by…

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Double whammy for Clothing Research

Two articles from Clothing Research at Consumption Research Norway have been accepted by the journal Fibers and are accessible online. The two articles are entitled Reducing plastic: Opportunities and obstacles for coarser wool in consumer goods and Natural and sustainable? Consumers’ textile fiber preferences. More than half of the team in the Clothing Research group…

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A functioning ‘functional unit’

For LCA-based tools and category rules, there is a central idea of a “functional unit”. How this will function in the ongoing work with EU’s PEFCR (Product Environmental Footprint Category Rules), is based on the number of days of “usability”. A “functional unit” is most often described for paint. It is not the liter of…

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New Research Centre in Copenhagen based on wardrobe research

The CHANGE masterclass seminar held at the Royal Danish Academy in Copenhagen September 30th 2022 hosted another interesting occasion. This was the launch of KLOTHING – Centre for Apparel, Textiles & Ecology Research. The first Danish research center on fashion, textiles and sustainability lead by me, Associate Professor, PhD, Else Skjold, who has been central…

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A real CHANGE

Casual and formal on a trajectory to merge? This question is emerging both in research and when looking at consumer trends for clothing and fashion. As part of the CHANGE project, one trajectory being explored is a return to clothing that is more versatile and less defined by occasion. In this exploration, a “mix and…

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Report from IWTO’s Round Table 2022

There seems to be renewed hope for strong wool and local production. Especially with a focus on regenerative grazing and looking at wool’s possible new (and perhaps old, but forgotten) applications. Regenerative agriculture was a major topic at the IWTO’s Round Table in Nuremberg, Germany, and the possibility of natural fibers to make a positive…

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Selbu spinning mill’s pivotal role in wool projects

12 years ago, Selbu spinning mill was established, focusing on wool from traditional, Norwegian heritage sheep breeds. From the beginning, cooperation in projects has been important. Let’s do a deep dive! Why do Selbu work on projects? Well…. Exchange of competence and skills, development of own competence and skills, new challenges for the employees and…

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Clothing research at the ESA Sociology of Consumption Conference

Last week SIFO hosted a conference for The European Sociological Association (ESA)’s Research Network of Sociology of Consumption. The theme for the conference was “Consumption, justice and futures: Where do we go from here? (oslomet.no)”. 146 participants from all over Europe gathered for the event and most of SIFO’s clothing researchers were among them. The…

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Deep diving into wardrobes provides important knowledge on clothes and their environmental impact

Authors: Vilde Haugrønning, Ingun Grimstad Klepp and Anna Schytte Sigaard Norway leads the way in methods for studying the use of clothing. This is knowledge that is important in sustainability studies of apparel. How many clothes are there in our wardrobes? What is used a lot and what do you seldom wear, and why? Which…

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Visit to Poland

Ingvild and Lisbeth visited Poland the last week of June. The goal of the trip was knowledge transfer and during it, they held three workshops/seminars. At the University of Bielsko-Biala, teachers and pedagogy students were invited to a workshop about teaching wool to children, emphasising the creative potential as well as cultural aspects of wool.…

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Feedback on the Sustainable Products Initiative (EU)

Kirsi Laitala and Ingun Grimstad Klepp have submitted feedback on the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation proposal on behalf of Consumption Research Norway. In the following, you can read the introduction. Click this link to read the whole feedback document (eu.com). The clothing research group also sent feedback on the Sustainable textiles strategy to Miljødirektoratet…

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New Make the Label Count White paper outlines important shortcomings for PEF

The report, that Ingun and Kirsi have contributed to, identifies key areas that are not aligned with other EU environmental strategies and that will have detrimental environmental effects if not amended. Key whitepaper findings: Issue #1: The PEF system does not currently take into account microplasticsOmitting microplastics as an indicator effectively assigns zero impacts to this…

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Feedback to the EU Textile Strategy

The input is based on knowledge from these ongoing research projects on clothing and its environmental impact, supported by the Norwegian Research Council: Lasting: Sustainable prosperity through product durability CHANGE: Environmental system shift in clothing consumption Wasted Textiles: Reduced synthetic textile waste through the development of resource-efficient value chains Amazing Grazing: Sustainable products from rangeland-grazing…

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Make the Label Count

Wednesday the 13th October, Ingun Grimstad Klepp participated in the panel discussion at the launch of the Make the Label Count campaign – an international coalition of organisations that want to ensure that the EU’s new labelling system for sustainable clothing is credible and valid. They are critical of the EU commission’s proposed use of…

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Product lifetime in European and Norwegian policies

The objective in this report is to better understand how the increased product lifetime option has been positioned in policies over the past twenty years. By means of policy document analysis, we explore product lifetime positioning in the EU’s circular economy policies, Norwegian political party programs and official documents, environmental NGO documents, consumer organisation policies…

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WOOLUME: Mapping the market for acoustic and sound absorbing products made of wool

This report is the first deliverable from work package 2 of the WOOLUME project. The main goal of WOOLUME is to explore different ways of using wool from Polish Mountain Sheep to achieve better utilisation of resources and value creation. The aim of the report has been to map the market for acoustic and sound…

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