Bibi Bleekemolen, Founding Member & Corporate Communications Manager of Fairphone: “We firmly believe that it’s possible to combine purpose and profits in a single company”

In 2011, Bibi Bleekemolen she met Fairphone founder Bas van Abel and together they travelled to the DR Congo as part of a campaign to raise awareness for conflict minerals, using a mobile phone as a storytelling object. Since the inception of social enterprise Fairphone in 2013, Bibi has been working on impact and public…

Joanna Yarrow, Head of Sustainable & Healthy Living, IKEA Group: “We need to develop a positive vision of how to live a good life within the limits of the planet”

Joanna Yarrow leads the IKEA Group’s work to inspire and enable 1 billion people to live better lives within the limits of the planet by 2030 – by making sustainable and healthy living affordable, attractive and accessible for as many people as possible worldwide. Joanna will be at Sustainable Brands Madrid 2018. The IKEA Sustainability…

Hello Madrid, hello world!

 HELLO WORLD! We are pleased to announce that the third edition of Sustainable Brands in Spain will take place in Madrid on May 7th, 8th, 9th 2017. Join us to debate How to Activate your business purpose with sustainability led-innovation, generating scalable impact and profitability with our theme: We will make productive use of our…

Roundtable: How to Become a Relevant brand for Millennials Now

Tuesday afternoon’s roundtable topic of discussion was How the Become a Relevant Brand for Millennials Now. The session began with moderator, Britt Hysen, giving the audience a brief overview of how to ‘define’ millennials. As founder and editor-in-chief of MiLLENiAL magazine, Britt has a unique perspective on the term. As social impact and sustainability are…

Key takeaways from two days of sharing about the sustainability of brands

As a conclusion of the “how now” conference we had the chance of hearing Rosalia Arteaga sharing her vision on those different trends that were mentioned over the weekend. What concerns legitimacy, companies that are doing business in a sustainable way will only get their legitimacy from the final customer. This is why they should…

How to embed circular economy thinking into a multinational’s culture now

Markus Laubscher, Director of Sustainability and Circular Economy of Philips, discussed with us ways of intervention that moves a multinational towards a circular economy thinking. Philips is celebrating its 125th anniversary. Markus told us the adoption of sustainable practices has been accelerating in the last 15 years in Philips. In 2003, the company had its first…

Trash is the good news! How to stop using our natural resources in a careless way now

Javier Goyeneche, President and Founder of Ecoalf, convinced us that it is possible to create new and fashion clothes utilizing the waste that people throw away every day in the environment. He presented us “Upcycling the Oceans”, an ambitious project that has as main goal removing waste from the Mediterranean Sea. They established a partnership with…

Mud Jeans: how sustainability can drive successful business model innovation now

Bert Van Son, CEO of Mud Jeans, presented us this start up from the Netherlands. The idea of the company is to encourage jeans costumers to buy a new one, use and then give it back after use. With this practice, Mud Jeans can be sure that all the materials will be recycled after use. The…

Falling in Love with Solutions

Trust someone involved in innovation for a living to find a link between women’s rights, statistics, Darwin and sustainability. This was precisely what Giulio Quaggiotto, Senior Programme Manager in Innovation Skills, NESTA, did during his session. Quaggiotto started the session with a thought-provoking idea, challenging the audience try to solve a problem without defining it.…