Macy's Inc.'s vice president of sustainability and responsible sourcing Keelin Evans tells Just Style the retailer started working with universities as part of its commitment to inspire the next generation on sustainability.
The goal is to source future leaders' perspectives and solutions to help solve sustainability challenges, including those specific to retailers such as Macy's.
She explains: "Working with internal stakeholders and our social impact and sustainability teams, we developed a series of projects shared with multiple universities, resulting in the University of Delaware's selection."
The University of Delaware's professor of fashion and apparel studies Dr Sheng Lu adds that his students have worked with Macy's over the past two years to explore innovative approaches and enhance the company's sustainability practices.
Lu has seen first-hand how these projects can give students invaluable hands-on sustainability knowledge and challenges them to apply their classroom learning to solve real-world problems.
"Students also have the unique opportunity to present their findings to Macy’s leadership team and receive constructive feedback. Such positive learning experiences are transformative and have a lasting impact on both students and myself as an educator," he notes.
While Evans highlights the project gave participating universities the chance to spend a term interviewing key Macy’s executives, visit facilities and develop their ideas.
At the end of it, the students were invited to give a presentation to key Macy’s leaders and stakeholders.
Why is Macy's working with university students to solve sustainability?
Evans believes that engaging with future fashion industry leaders benefits everyone.
Plus, she highlights that working with institutions like the University of Delaware has provided the retailer and future leaders the chance to develop meaningful relationships, including mentorships and programmes.
"The sharing of ideas supports Macy’s, Inc.’s efforts to manage our environmental impact and care for the people who make our products. Projects like this provide opportunities for students to solve real-world challenges and include their voices in making a difference to create a better world," she says.
Macy's also has a wider mission to empower young people to protect and advocate for a healthier planet for many generations to come.
Its goal is to embed corporate responsibility throughout its enterprise to support sales-growth strategies while improving the company’s ESG performance, with Evans noting: "Through our efforts to care for the people who make our products while also managing our environmental impact, we have curated and created sustainable products and services so people and the planet can thrive together."
The company's enterprise-wide social purpose platform called Mission Every One is said to build on its brand’s heritage of corporate citizenship to achieve positive societal change.
It hopes to create a brighter future with bold representation for all, empowering more voice, choice and ownership for colleagues, customers and communities.
As part of this initiative the company added more products to its sustainability 'sitelets' in 2023 for both its Macy's and Bloomingdales department stores that met at least one of its four sustainability pillar requirements — preferred materials, preferred practices, people first, or designed for less waste.
In total there were 7,000 product pages on its sustainability sitelets in 2023 with private brand suppliers managed by the Macy’s sourcing team completing zero-tolerance training that focused on transparency and business ethics, labour and health and safety.
What are the benefits for fashion university students?
Lu is adamant a close partnership between fashion companies and educational programmes is essential to address the gaps that still exist in sustainability education.
He states: "Sustainability education is crucial for fashion programmes as we directly cultivate future talents in the fashion industry."
He also makes the point that while there are many concerns about the environmental and social impacts of apparel production and trade, it is important to remember that fashion companies are composed of ‘people,’ and it is real people who ultimately make design, product development, sourcing, and buying decisions.
Therefore, he continues: "Whether our Gen Z fashion students are sufficiently exposed to real-world sustainability challenges and equipped with the right skills to address these complex issues will significantly impact the fashion industry’s sustainable future."
Lu asserts it would be a huge mistake for fashion programmes to only teach students technical apparel design or merchandising skills.
Instead, he says the sector needs the next generation of designers who naturally embrace the concept of circularity, textile scientists who can constantly develop more sustainable fabrics, sourcing specialists who prioritise eco-friendly materials and care about workers’ rights, and marketing specialists who can effectively engage with consumers to encourage more sustainable shopping behaviours.
Is teaching sustainability in the fashion classroom enough?
Lu admits many US and UK fashion apparel education programmes have incorporated sustainability into the curriculum, but he adds the scope and depth of coverage varies significantly.
For example, he says it is common for fashion students to take courses on topics such as Fashion and Sustainability, Circular Fashion Systems, and Ethical Fashion and Social Responsibility.
With growing demands from fashion companies for talents with sustainability knowledge, graduate-level certificate programmes focusing on fashion sustainability have also seen rapid growth in recent years.
However, from an educator’s perspective, he sees major challenges facing sustainability education in fashion programmes.
"Real-world sustainability issues in the fashion industry are becoming increasingly detailed and technical and faculty may lack the necessary knowledge and practical experience to teach these topics adequately," he shares.
For instance, emerging issues such as the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA), Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) legislation, and ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) reporting are top concerns for fashion brands and retailers today but may not be well understood by educators, let alone appropriate teaching materials.
In other words, he believes it's not enough to only discuss why sustainability matters in the classroom: "Fashion programmes need to provide students with more hands-on knowledge and practical experience on how to contribute to solving sustainability issues in the industry."
Are enough fashion companies offering real-world sustainability experience?
Lu doesn't believe enough fashion companies offer fashion students real-world sustainability experiences.
He would love to see more visionary fashion companies partner with the University of Delaware's educational programmes to strategically "invest" in the students who he describes as "the next generation" of fashion industry professionals.
He adds: "This partnership could include sharing the company’s first-hand sustainability practices, launching joint course projects, and providing internship or training opportunities for both students and our educators. We are all stakeholders to jointly build a more sustainable fashion industry.”
Students reveal best ways to work with fashion companies on sustainability in future
Some of Lu's fashion students who took part in the Macy's project were keen to share their advice to other fashion companies wishing to work with students on sustainability in future.
Natalie Heindel, for example, urges fashion companies to create structured programmes that offer meaningful and hands-on experiences for students.
She says: "Have them become involved in projects that address real sustainability challenges within your business. Encourage a collaborative environment where students feel valued and can contribute innovative ideas. Provide resources to help students understand the impact of their work.
Heindel adds that building strong partnerships with universities can also enhance the effectiveness of the initiatives as students are passionate about them and are willing to work hard to drive change in the industry.
She sees it as a win-win and continues: "Create a programme where students can research ideas to put into place at your companies. By allowing students to work on actual sustainability challenges within a major retail environment, it helps them further their education, outside of the classroom, and it helps the company have new and innovative ideas for the business."
University of Delaware fashion and apparel studies graduate student Ally Botwinick tells Just Style students would specifically like to learn more about the tracking and reporting aspects of sustainability.
For her, the key question is: How does a fashion company truly measure its environmental footprint?
She clarifies: "There are many complexities that come with setting sustainability goals and tracking them, so I think this is an important topic to cover."
Graduate teaching assistant Alexa Hansen sees defining clear sustainability goals for the partnership and ensuring students understand how their contributions align with the retailer or brand's objectives as essential.
She asserts: "Providing regular check-ins and feedback sessions to help students develop their skills while valuing their innovative ideas fosters a healthy environment."
Hansen also highly values offering hands-on opportunities for students to work on real sustainability projects and encouraging them to consider their broader impact on the industry.
She suggests promoting interdisciplinary collaboration by connecting students from various fields such as design, business, and engineering for a more comprehensive project analysis.
Additionally, she shares that fashion companies and retailers can "motivate and recognise outstanding contributions with incentives like internships, scholarships, or awards. Highlighting student projects and achievements in company communications can showcase their impact and inspire future projects."
All three took part in the Macy's project and found it to be invaluable but in very different ways depending on their specialisms.
Heindel explains her project focused on extended producer responsibility (EPR) requirements and how they are impacting fashion companies such as Macy's.
She agrees with Sheng in the sense that her school has a "great" sustainability programme, but maintains having real-world experience paints the picture: "Through the Macy's project, we learned how to implement sustainable practices in retail, and became aware of the struggles of driving sustainability in a large organisation."
Plus, it allowed her to interview key stakeholders in the industry.
Hansen's Macy's project honed in on how to balance regulations such as EPR with sustainable innovation and investment. Her primary focus was on updating the packaging section of Macy’s vendor standards and ensuring vendors felt confident in their sustainable efforts without the fear of fees imposed by the Producer Responsibility Organisation (PRO).
She highlights: "While these regulations may seem daunting initially, their goals align with our shared vision of creating an environmentally friendly future for fashion."
Finally, Botwinick's project enabled her to put classroom learnings on global apparel sourcing trends and common apparel sourcing destinations into practice: "Through the Macy’s project we were able to use big data to examine where Macy’s sources clothing made from recycled materials and analyse what may be the reasoning behind it. Why do they choose to source from certain countries over others? We also explored which product categories were most likely to contain clothing made from recycled materials and drew conclusions on the reasons why."
She found the whole experience to be extremely inspiring and memorable, as she was able to learn from Macy's' talented sustainability and sourcing professionals right before beginning her own career in the fashion industry.
She concludes: "Hearing their views on the opportunities and challenges that come with promoting sustainability in fashion filled me with optimism and encouragement, and it left me feeling even more passionate about wanting to advance sustainability in my fashion career."
