Global Change Award

The H&M Foundation announces a call for entries for the second Global Change Award. Apply with your idea on how to make fashion circular for a chance to win a share of the €1 million grant. What if we could reinvent fashion? What if we could make a shift from “take-make-waste” to a fashion world where there is no waste? What materials would we use? What would the processes and business models look like? We are looking for game changing ideas that can make fashion circular.

Clothing made of citrus by-products, microbes that digest waste polyester, and an online marketplace for textile leftovers are some of the five disruptive ideas that shared the first €1 million Global Change Award grant in 2015. The challenge is designed to spur early innovations that can accelerate the shift from a linear to a circular fashion industry, with the aim of protecting the planet and our living conditions.

Initiated by H&M Foundation in 2015, the first Global Change Award received more than 2,700 applications from 112 countries. How the €1 million grant was shared between the five winners was up to the public to decide through an online vote at www.globalchangeaward.com.

Global Change Award is open for anyone to apply (check out the FAQ for a few exceptions). Five winners, selected by our expert panel, will share a €1 million grant and get access to an innovation accelerator provided by H&M Foundation, Accenture and KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.

The Global Change Award is open for applications until 31 October 2016.

Circularity is not just about recycling. To encourage ideas from a broad circular scope, the Global Change Award 2016 has three categories open for applications.

Circular Business Models: In this category we are looking for ideas that use innovative business models to seize new opportunities in the fashion industry. It could for example be ideas on how to reuse, repair, share, or extend the life of products. It could also be ideas for models that unleash potential in the production chain.

Circular Materials: In this category we are looking for ideas that use technologies to reinvent the materials that are being used in the fashion industry today. This might include new fibres, recycling technologies or engineered materials.

Circular Processes: In this category we are looking for ideas using technologies and systems that redesign current processes in the fashion industry. This could for example be methods targeting chemicals, water and dyeing, 3D printing or demand-driven manufacturing.