My Textiles Network - May 2020

Welcome to the May 2020 edition of My Textiles Network newsletter! 

My Textiles Network has been created to enable my vast international network of connections in the textile industry to connect with each other - and to inform, educate and exchange views along the way.

If you’d like to join, please click on the following link: https://belinda-carp.com/membership/ and select the level of membership which suits you.

Then, please send an email to me at [email protected] to let me know the types of contacts which would be useful to you. Once you become a member, I'll search through the network and send you the names of up to 5 contacts whom I think will be helpful. I look forward to welcoming you to My Textiles Network.

In the meantime, how are you coping with the strange new world in which we find ourselves? Some of us are working from home; some of us are not working at all; some of us are switching manufacturing activities in order to provide PPE for those in need of protection from the virus at work.

My brother, whose background is in plastics, was asked to help adapt a factory which normally makes paper drinking straws for the hospitality industry. They are now producing around 50,000 plastic visors (PPE) each day, 7 days a week, and distributing them to those in need within the health sector, care homes and others who have to come into contact with people while they work. So now this factory is producing much-needed PPE and, at the same time, keeping their workers fully employed during the crisis.

And this week, I should have been attending Performance Days in Germany. Instead, I have enjoyed the expert presentations online instead –from the comfort of my home office. I missed seeing the exhibitors, but if I’d attended the event in person, I would probably have seen the exhibitors and missed the presentations.

My aim, during lockdown, is to catch up on some of the reading that I’ve not had time to do lately – and, crucially, to try to understand what lessons we can learn from the current crisis which can be applied to the environmental crisis which looms over us. When things return to “normal”, after the Covid-19 crisis, I wonder how much of that “normal” will have changed. As the world is in turmoil – with health, wealth and the planet itself in trouble – we begin to view things differently. For example, we don’t really need to “save the planet”, do we? It’s the human species that we need to save. The planet will continue perfectly well without humans. If we continue to destroy the life support system on which we depend, we won’t survive, but the planet will thrive!

Stay in touch, and keep well. I look forward to hearing from you.