CSR In Action - Stitching Change: Rethinking Fast Fashion

About the Program

"Corporate Responsibility in Action: Navigating Sustainability for a Better Future" is a four-part series aimed at educating and empowering young professionals on the importance of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in tackling today’s most pressing sustainability challenges. 

Hosted by the United Nations Association of Australia Young Professionals (UNAA YP) in partnership with People Planet Pint, each session will explore key topics like climate change, social equity, resource management, and the impact of intensive agriculture, providing valuable insights from industry leaders. 

Following each event, People Planet Pint initiative will organise a networking moment at the same venue, offering participants the chance to connect, discuss, and reflect on the event topics in a more informal setting. 

This series is designed to join forces and inspire Young Professionals to take action, get involved, and contribute to a more sustainable, responsible future, starting on as early on in their careers as possible.

Event Objectives

This event aims to critically examine the fast fashion industry through the lens of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) — focusing on the social, environmental, and ethical implications of our global clothing systems. The panel will unpack the role of businesses in creating (or challenging) exploitative supply chains, the human rights issues embedded in mass production, and the environmental costs of cheap, disposable clothing. Young professionals will be inspired to rethink fashion and understand how they can advocate for and implement more responsible practices in their own industries, organisations, communities and purchasing behaviours.

Dress Code - "Wear Your Values"

🌿 Participants are warmly invited to wear sustainable clothing, such as pre-loved, repurposed, or long-loved garments. No new purchases needed — this is a celebration of creativity, conscious choices, and clothes that tell a story.

Key Themes

• The Human Cost of Fast Fashion: Highlighting the modern slavery and unsafe working conditions that persist in many garment-producing countries, especially where regulations are weak or unenforced.

• The Environmental Toll: Exploring how the fast fashion cycle contributes to pollution, waste, water usage, and carbon emissions—and what businesses can do to change this.

• CSR in the Fashion Industry: How companies can shift towards ethical sourcing, transparent supply chains, circular production models, and regenerative textiles.

• Consumer Power and Young Professionals: How young professionals, both as consumers and corporate actors, can question their workplace procurement practices, influence supplier decisions, and support more sustainable fashion.

• Human Rights & Supply Chains: Emphasising the importance of embedding due diligence, traceability, and fairness into global supply chains.

Featured Speakers

Professor Susan Harris Rimmer – Human Rights Expert, research academic specialising in human rights, climate justice and international law in the Griffith Law School.

Professor Susan Harris Rimmer focuses on international human rights law, climate justice, national security, foreign policy and gender equality in the Griffith Law School.  She was appointed as a General Member (sessional) in the Administrative Review Tribunal in March 2025.

On 27 February 2024, Professor Susan Harris Rimmer was appointed by the Attorney-General and Minister for Justice and Minister for the Prevention of Domestic and Family Violence (the Attorney-General) to undertake an independent review of the Human Rights Act 2019 (HR Act). This included an opportunity to assess the implementation of the HR Act since fully commencing on 1 January 2020, and how well it is meeting its objective of building a culture of human rights in the Queensland public sector (until 1 July 2023). Professor Harris Rimmer conducted consultation with various stakeholders as part of the review process and provided a report titled 'Placing People at the Heart of Policy' tabled in the Queensland Parliament in March 2025. All recommendations were rejected by the Crisafuli government.

Sue leads the Climate Justice theme of the Griffith Climate Action Beacon. She is the founder of the EveryGen coalition (www.everygen.online) which seeks to amplify the voices of current and future generations and highlight the long-term impacts of today’s policy decisions. EveryGen would like to see an Act of parliament, similar to The Wellbeing of Future Generations Act, that was first adopted in Wales in 2016. A Welsh-style Act would embed the protection of future generations into Australian legislation, making sustainable development the organising principle of government.

Susan was named a Fellow of the Australian Institute of International Affairs in 2024. She was the 2021 winner of the Fulbright Scholarship in Australian-United States Alliance Studies (funded by DFAT) and was hosted by Georgetown University in Washington DC in 2022. She was named a Top Innovator by Uplink World Economic Forum for the Climate Justice Challenge in 2022 for the creation of the Climate Justice Observatory (www.climatejusticeobservatory.com.au). 

Susan provided the independent Human Rights Assessment for the successful FIFA Women’s World Cup Australia and New Zealand 2032 Bid in 2020 and was the Human Rights Adviser to GOLDOC for the 2018 Commonwealth Games.

Susan's latest book is Climate Politics in Oceania MUP 2024 (with Caitlin Byrne and Wes Morgan).

Sue was previously the Advocacy lead at the Australian Council for International Development (ACFID). She has also worked for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, the National Council of Churches and the Parliamentary Library.

Meriel Chamberlain - Business Development Manager, Salvos Stores | Founder & Creator, Full Circle Fibres

Meriel Chamberlin is a leading figure in sustainable textile systems and now heading up Business Development for Project Boomerang, Australia’s first waste garment auto sorting and decommissioning plant. In Carole Park, South East QLD.

With over 30 years of experience in the textile industry across the UK, Europe, Asia, and Australia, Meriel brings technical depth having worked in and with all stages from fibre through to brand, both large scale and small, including extensive collaboration with growers, mills, manufacturers, and fashion brands to prototype and deliver low-impact, domestically produced textile products working with mills in Victoria and QLD. She has also contributed to key industry stewardship programs such as Seamless and has been a vocal advocate for national policy reform on circular textiles, being awarded a Churchill Fellowship in 2023, https://www.churchilltrust.com.au/fellow/meriel-chamberlin-qld-2023/  in commercially viable Zero Waste Textiles Systems.

Moderated by: Sarah Woolmington, Impact Dragonfly

What to Expect

• Understand the systemic challenges within the fashion industry and what responsible business can look like.

• Reflect on our personal and organisational consumption and procurement habits.

• Learn how to advocate for ethical sourcing and fair labour within our own families, communities, teams, departments, and potentially - procurement chain and networks.

• Discover new pathways and opportunities to engage in or pivot toward careers in ethical fashion and supply chain responsibility.

• Network with like-minded young professionals and sustainability leaders during a post-event session faciliated by People Planet Pint Brisbane

  Whether you're a student, an early-career professional, or a rising leader, this event will equip you with the tools, knowledge, and network to become a driving force for sustainability. Together, let’s create a more responsible and resilient future.
   

🗓️ Date:  9 September 2025, 5:30pm
📌 Location: Griffith Theatre, Griffith University (Southbank Campus) 140 Grey Street

Join us for an evening of actionable insights, inspiration, and connection. Be the change your organisation and the planet need!