Starting in 2020, TOM FORD and TOM FORD BEAUTY, an Estée Lauder Companies brand, and ocean health non-profit Lonely Whale brought together key partners and stakeholders as well as 19 early adopter brands to source scalable solutions to one of the most environmentally detrimental materials used heavily across the fashion and beauty industries: thin-film plastic made from fossil fuels. The competition returned dozens of submissions from a competitive set of innovators which were ultimately narrowed down to 8 finalists. After a rigorous nine-month testing phase, three of them were named Grand Prize Winners by a diverse set of industry-leading judges across the fashion, tech, sports, sustainability, financial and innovation industries. Announced in March 2023, the winning companies - Sway, Zerocircle, and Notpla - all used seaweed to design their sustainable alternatives to thin-film plastic.
Now, together with Lonely Whale, The Estée Lauder Companies with TOM FORD and TOM FORD BEAUTY are launching an Innovation Accelerator designed to support the adoption of these winning materials in order to displace traditional thin-film plastic polybags, a common type of packaging used to ship individual items such as clothing, shoes and cosmetics. This keynote presentation will describe the whole innovation process to date and further reveal how The Estée Lauder Companies are supporting the winners of the Prize to accelerate the widespread adoption of the new materials into the supply chains of a growing list of major brands such as J.Crew, Dell Technologies and others.