Lara Botta
Vice President, BOTTA EcoPackaging, Milano Italy
Lara Botta is Vice President of BOTTA EcoPackaging, an Italian family business pioneering sustainable and circular packaging solutions for the retail, e-commerce, and fashion sectors. She leads the company’s international strategy and its EcoPackaging consultancy, helping global brands transition toward circular systems, reduce waste, and comply with evolving sustainability regulations. A recognized voice in sustainable innovation, Lara has been featured in international forums and acknowledged by Forbes Italia for her leadership in advancing circular economy practices.
3. How can the Middle East fashion sector balance rapid growth with sustainable practices, particularly in luxury and fast fashion?
It is often easier to design for circularity from the beginning than to retrofit sustainability into existing, linear models. For the Middle East, where the fashion sector is growing rapidly, this presents a real advantage: luxury fashion can embed durable, repairable, and recyclable principles directly into design, while fast fashion players can prioritize low water dyeing techniques and localized production to reduce resource use. To turn ambition into practice, brands benefit from specialized sustainability consultancy that translates commitments into clear strategies. At BOTTA EcoPackaging, our advisory services support companies in assessing material flows, optimizing packaging choices, and aligning with global standards. This type of guidance ensures that growth in the Middle East fashion sector is not only rapid, but also resilient, responsible, and internationally competitive.
4. How are secondhand markets and sustainable fashion startups emerging in the Middle East, and what support do they need to scale?
Secondhand and resale fashion platforms are steadily gaining traction across the Middle East, driven by Gen Z and millennial consumers who are increasingly motivated by both sustainability and affordability. Examples such as The Luxury Closet (UAE) and Thrift for Good highlight the appetite for resale, but challenges remain in consumer trust, fragmented regulation, and the environmental footprint of logistics. Scaling these models requires supportive government frameworks and cultural awareness campaigns that reposition resale fashion as aspirational and sustainable. Equally crucial is ensuring operational sustainability, particularly in packaging and distribution. Circular packaging is becoming a key element in fashion, especially in the fast-growing resale and e-commerce segments, where packaging is often the consumer’s first tangible experience of a brand. Services like our circular e-commerce packaging solutions show how companies can reduce waste, extend packaging lifecycles, and reinforce their sustainability credentials. Globally, the trajectory is clear. According to Bloomberg Intelligence’s report Global Apparel: The Rise of Rental, Resale and Repair, circular business models such as resale and rental could grow to 23% of the global fashion market by 2030, significantly outpacing the expected growth rate of new clothing. For Middle Eastern startups, this represents not just a sustainability imperative but also a commercial opportunity: brands that fail to adopt or partner in resale may risk losing sales to consumer-to-consumer platforms, while those that act early can capture new revenue streams and deepen consumer loyalty.
2. What are the most effective ways to ensure full supply chain traceability and transparency across global fashion brands?
Ensuring supply chain transparency requires solutions that are scalable, regulation-ready, and user friendly. With the European Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR) and the Digital Product Passport (DPP) setting new standards, brands must adopt tools that provide real-time, verifiable data on product origins and sustainability credentials. Digital identifiers, such as dynamic QR codes, offer a practical pathway. At BOTTA EcoPackaging, we introduced the iQRcode™ system, which connects each product to an automatically updated digital identity containing origin, composition, recyclability, and environmental impact data. Unlike static solutions, this approach evolves alongside regulations, ensuring compliance while remaining accessible to consumers through a simple scan. For fashion, embedding such tools into product labels or packaging bridges the gap between regulatory compliance and consumer trust, making transparency not just mandatory, but also a competitive advantage.
1.How can the fashion industry scale the adoption of bio-based and circular materials while remaining affordable and accessible to consumers?
Scaling bio-based and circular materials requires a dual approach: innovation at source and collaboration along the value chain. On the innovation side, investing in next-generation materials like mycelium leather or textile fibers from agricultural waste that helps reduce reliance on resource intensive virgin fibers. On the collaboration side, the fashion industry can learn from sectors like packaging, where shared R&D and cross-industry partnerships accelerate cost reduction and adoption. Affordability comes with scale, but scale only comes with demand. That’s why consumer education is critical. Clear communication on environmental benefits creates willingness to pay, while regulatory incentives, like reduced import duties for bio-based textiles, can help bridge the gap until markets mature.