A panel discussing sustainable innovations may sound quite boring – it surely didn’t instill the same curious feeling in me that a clickbait title might – but when I got around to watching the panels that ran during Watches and Wonders 2022, I was fascinated by the real-world discussion between Oris co-CEO Rolf Studer, Ressence founder Benoît Mintiens, Alexis Georgacopoulos, director of Ecole Cantonale d’Art Lausanne (ECAL), and Julien Stervinou, head of the sustainable innovation lab for watches and jewelry at Kering.

Sustainability discussion panel during Watches and Wonders 2022

Recycling, circular models, composting, offsetting, and cycles (plus more) are the subjects that these four knowledgeable insiders tackle.

What is happening today in luxury? Why is sustainability such a buzzword right now? This panel tries to answer as many questions as possible to provide insight into what is currently happening in the watch industry.

As a bonus, Georgacopoulos talks about how young design students are taught to integrate sustainability and sustainable topics into their work.

This includes packaging, which Stervinou admits is a problem that needs attention. “[Our] total of packaging is ten times higher than the total mass of metal for our products,” he says in the video, a stat that shocked me somewhat.

Important issues and lots of interesting facts is what we find here, even if we are in an industry in which the products generally don’t get “thrown away” and are therefore sustainable themselves. It’s definitely worth watching, or at least listening to.

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