Grant Novak
OPIUS
How can we keep garments in use and out of landfills?
OPIUS is dedicated to keeping outdoor gear in use and out of landfills. For a one-time fee, users attach a permanent OPIUS membership to a garment of their choice in the form of a discrete embroidered patch with an NFC chip inside. In return, we commit to help keep that garment in use and out of landfills. An OPIUS membership belongs to the garment for its entire usable lifetime. When an item is resold, its new user inherits all the benefits of membership. Each OPIUS patch has a unique ID and allows us to log all service events in the garment's online historical record. OPIUS_x_Arc'Teryx expands our impact up the supply chain. Select Arc'Teryx products will be sold with built-in OPIUS memberships, provided they meet our requirements for circular infrastructure (repair/resale services, etc.) and supply-chain transparency. Arc'Teryx will be able to access their garments' historical data for their own purposes.
Insight
Many outdoor gear brands – Patagonia, Arc’Teryx, North Face – have repair/reuse/resale infrastructure for users to access. However, these services ignore local infrastructure like repair shops and consignment stores, requiring shipping of items to/from central facilities and depriving these local businesses of revenue; and repair/reuse/resale infrastructure is only of use if users actually engage with it.Apart from offering store credit for trade-ins, and lower-cost pre-owned garments, these companies have not been imaginative in motivating users to actually participate in a circular fashion economy. Research identified an opportunity to help form a community of use including users, brands, and local services.
Idea
OPIUS was conceived to incentivise engagement with available services from outdoor gear OEMs while also seeking to support local elements of a circular fashion economy. Our commitment motivates long-use low-waste use practices and offers service in support of these behaviours. An OPIUS membership for a garment represents a commitment to keeping that item in use and out of landfills for as long as possible. To support this, OPIUS offers assistance with care, repair, resale, and buyback/upcycling – and will always seek to leverage these services local to the user whenever possible.
Impact
Wearing every garment just twice as many times on average would reduce fashion’s GHG emissions by 44%; OPIUS is specifically designed to directly reduce waste and GHG emissions by increasing clothing utilization (lengthening its life). OPIUS motivates and simplifies repair/resale/reuse practices and does so by engaging services local to the user whenever possible. By making increased utilization easier and more attractive, while driving support for local service infrastructure and communities of use, OPIUS is designed not just to increase clothing utilization directly, but to be part of a cultural shift towards circular use and away from linear consumption.
Biography
Grant Novak was born in Calgary, Alberta. He discovered an innate love of physical activity early in life, which gradually matured into a fascination for human movement. For Grant, a life rich in physical activities and experiences is essential for health and happiness. He hopes to turn this passion towards a career in sports product design, with performance and injury prevention/rehabilitation as key interest areas.
Grant is a nature lover and a believer in design for the environment. He began a degree in environmental science before suspending his studies in 2012 to train and race biathlon full time; and while he would study hard sciences no further, he brings the same environmental attention into his design practice. Grant is naturally collaborative, and hopes his future will be less professionally lonely than his thesis year.