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From tackling the garment industry’s waste challenges, to proving a product’s provenance and providing infinite creative opportunities for designers, ‘digital twins’ – a digital reproduction of real-life clothing or accessories – are already providing significant benefits.

Lui Iarocheski, VP of marketing and new ventures at PlatformE – a Porto, Portugal-based fashion tech company offering mass customisation at scale for fashion brands told Just Style: “The beauty of a digital twin is that it carries rich data.…

Alcohol-free beverages have come a long way since the 1970s when they were targeted at vehicle drivers worried about losing their licences. But with a decrease in per-capita consumption of alcohol among many higher-income markets, many consumers who normally drink alcohol are becoming “sober curious” – looking for non-alcoholic alternatives, according to Andrew Greenhill, an assistant professor for microbiology and fermentation technology at Federation University, Victoria, Australia.…

As competition in the global beverage market increases, manufacturers are looking to labelling as a key to grow brands through ‘premiumisation’, emphasising its superior quality, exclusivity and sustainability to consumers.

“Customers are looking for premiumisation of their beverage labelling in terms of embellishment, foiling, tactile finishes, but coupled with a sustainable twist,” said Ben Robinson, sales director at Bradford, UK-based The Label Makers, a company that produces labels for premium brands such as Trinidad & Tobago-manufactured Kraken Rum.…

Transparency International (TI) has warned that “conflict creates opportunities for corruption and subverts governments’ efforts to stop it” when unveiling its 2022 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) on January 31, scoring 180 countries worldwide on perceived levels of public sector corruption from 0 (highly corrupt) to 100 (very clean) with the average 43.…

THE EUROPEAN Commission’s new proposal for a packaging and packaging waste regulation (PPWR) adopted November 30, 2022 (1), will only be successful if amendments make its ambitious sustainability targets more realistic, European food and drink experts have told Food & Drink Technology (FDT).…

Biomass is under threat as the leading source of renewable energy in the European Union (EU) under controversial proposals to cap use of primary woody biomass and end subsidies by the end of 2026. Bioenergy Europe figures (1) show that 69.6% of biomass energy feedstock used in Europe comes from woody biomass, which are forestry and wood industry residues with the remaining feedstock sourced 18.3% from agricultural biomass and 12.1% biowaste.…

Caribbean island states are looking to harness their natural advantage in bounteous sunlight to expand solar power, boosting their energy independence, while reducing the cost of energy as gas and oil prices rise. Even in oil and gas-rich Trinidad & Tobago, consumers have been feeling the energy pinch, facing increases in their electricity bills in 2023.…

EGYPTIAN businesses are struggling to import goods due to an ongoing shortage of US dollars, while the Egyptian pound has depreciated by over half in less than a year and inflation is in the double digits. Such issues, along with tough import requirements, has pushed businesses to resort to roundabout, sometimes illicit, means to stay afloat.…

With the USA looking to replace fossil fuel consumption in its energy sector, its nuclear industry has “no appetite” for building traditional large-scale nuclear reactors…because of the delays and the cost overruns on such mega projects, said Jacopo Buongiorno, a nuclear energy expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).…

Researchers at the University of Sherbrooke, in Québec, supported by CMC Microsystems, are helping build sensors to detect ‘dark matter’ – the unknown substance that scientists think makes up about 27% of the universe. That, combined with the equally undetectable dark energy (68% of the universe says physics research centre CERN), can be inferred by its gravitational pull on stars and planets.…