Sliced Bread

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Sliced Bread Presents: Sustainable Jeans

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Sustainable Jeans

BBC Radio 4 - Sliced Bread, Sustainable Jeans

What makes them more sustainable? Do they last longer? Greg puts them to the test.

They can cost ten times more but what exactly does sustainability mean? Does paying more mean they’ll last longer? Greg Foot literally tests some to destruction to find out.

“Make better. Buy better. Wear it longer.” Lots of fashion brands are including claims like this in their adverts and one item of clothing that’s really getting the stamp of supposed “sustainability” is jeans.

Maddie has asked Greg to look into what “sustainability” actually means when it comes to denim. Is it a term that marks genuine eco-impact, or is it more marketing BS? 
And, as adverts claim, do “sustainable” jeans last longer? 

Greg speaks to an organisation that rates clothing brands’ sustainability credentials and visits Manchester Metropolitan University to hear the results of their ‘rub test’.
Do you have a suggestion of a ‘wonder-product’ making a bold claim that Greg can investigate next? 

Send us your suggestions to sliced.bread@bbc.co.uk or send it to Greg direct on Twitter and Instagram where he’s @gregfoot

PRESENTER: GREG FOOT
PRODUCER: JULIAN PASZKIEWICZ

Sliced Bread Presents

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

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Factual: Health & Wellbeing

Factual: Science & Nature

Factual: Science & Nature: Science & Technology

While Sliced Bread takes a break, we serve up... Toast.

While Sliced Bread takes a break, we serve up... Toast. Sean Farrington examines the spectacular failures of wonder products and businesses which had promised so much.

While Sliced Bread takes a break we serve up... Toast. A study of the spectacular failures of brands which had promised so much to consumers.    

In each episode, the presenter and BBC business journalist, Sean Farrington, examines one big idea. What did it promise? Why did people back it? Why did they get burnt?  

Some of the world's most successful businesses have also brought us some of the world's most remarkable failures. So, what led them to be toast? And what can we learn from their stories today? 

Sean unpicks all the early optimism, hype and ambition. He learns about the tremendous success of a brand before hearing how it faltered, with help from expert commentators and people who were directly involved. How do they view things now and what, if anything, could have been done differently? 

The self-made millionaire and serial entrepreneur, Sam White, is alongside him, analysing the missteps that changed a brand's fortunes and reaching her own, often instructive, conclusions.  

From big tech to high street retail and, of course, food, Toast tackles the business ideas that, one way or another, ended up cooked. 

Sliced Bread returns for a new batch of investigations in February. In the new series, Greg Foot will investigate more of the latest so-called wonder products to find out whether they really are the best thing since sliced bread. In the meantime, Toast is available in the Sliced Bread feed on BBC Sounds.

Toast is a BBC Audio North production for BBC Radio 4.

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