’s a CFO issue,” said Benedetto, the former Wall Street corporate lawyer whose family has worked in the textiles business for more than 100 years. The fashion industry is widely known as one of the greatest polluters in the world so in response, Benedetto launched Queen of Raw, which entered the Australian market last year. On the platform, brands and retailers can buy and sell their unused textiles, keeping them out of landfill and turning pollution into profit.  “Leveraging blockchain and machine learning/AI, we intelligently match buyers with sellers so unused textiles are sold quickly and easily at lower price points, giving designers access to materials that they never had before,” said Benedetto. Sellers are also able to map, measure and trace their textile waste in real-time to help them minimise their waste in the future.  “The quicker we can match a buyer with a seller, the quicker we can keep this inventory out of landfills and turn pollution into profit,” Benedetto told Inside Retail. “But this is just the beginning. By integrating directly into a business’ inventory management system, we can actually identify when the waste was produced and why it was produced — what was previously dark data.” “As a result, we can see if a business’ waste over time is increasing or decreasing and help them intelligently minimise waste streams going forward. This improves their bottom line while also giving them a great sustainable story to tell, improving their top line.” According to Benedetto, it has been estimated that Australians are the world’s second highest consumers of textiles per capita, with around three out of 10 people admitting to discarding more than 10 items in the past year alone. “Almost the same number admit to throwing away a piece of clothing they’ve only worn once,” she said. “In fact, Australians discard on average 27 kilograms of clothing every year, which means 85 per cent of all textiles in Australia are ending up in landfill every year.”   “This makes Australia a great place for us to support.” By keeping textiles in circulation longer and not manufacturing new fabrics, Queen of Raw has so far saved more than a billion gallons of water, which is enough clean water for 1.43 million people to drink around the world for three years, Benedetto explained. “All that wasted fabric is destroying business’ pockets and your drinking water,” she said.  “One t-shirt takes 700 gallons of water to produce and another 700 gallons of water to wash it in its lifetime. And that’s just one shirt — over two billion shirts are sold around the world every single year. It’s actually the number two polluter in the world of clean water globally.” Going sustainable doesn’t cost businesses much, it can actually help save money, but it does require the participation of C-suite executives, said Benedetto. “We need the CMOs who are worried about storytelling, the CIOs and COOs who are responsible for technology, procurement, and managing the supply chain day-to-day, the CFOs who manage the liabilities and bottom- and top-line growth, and the CEOs responsible for setting the corporate agenda,” she said. “That’s the beauty of how we built our business. We have the economic piece so our customers are not just doing well [for the sake of it], but because it makes good business sense. That’s a win-win-win… and how do you say ‘no’ to that?”