No one dies for fashion in greater numbers than, it turns out, the trees. More than 150 million are cleared every year, shipped around the world, then pulped and processed into viscose.

Amazon.com Inc. is betting that stores of the future won’t have any clerks or registers. A company in Japan thinks it can get there first.

Global retail sector technology spending will grow 3.6 percent to reach almost $203.6bn in 2019, with similar growth rates for the next two years.