The state of sustainability

2023 could see some important steps being taken to create a sustainable global fashion supply chain. Credit: Shutterstock

The sustainability of the global fashion industry is coming under increased scrutiny. Concerns about how the industry uses water, chemicals and human labour, its greenhouse gas emissions and the mounting landfilling of ‘fast fashion’ disposables, have led politicians, sustainability activists and consumers to put pressure on the industry to change.  

Some luxury fashion brands, such as B-corp French luxury fashion house Chloé have seized control of their manufacturing and distribution processes to maintain sustainable and ethical methods throughout their supply chains. However, such sustainability collaboration is not widespread.  

Carlo Capasa, chairman of the Italy-headquartered National Chamber of Italian Fashion (Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana), said this lack of cooperation is a major barrier to improving the industry’s sustainability profile.

Capasa notes that achieving a circular economy in fashion, where materials are re-used and regenerated to minimise waste, relies on all the other industries that support the fashion supply chain also adopting circular models.

Organisations have been established to promote the circular economy in fashion, such as the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, which advocates greater durability of clothes, less harmful inputs to the manufacturing process and more recycling.

Carolyn Poon, director of sustainability at the Singapore Fashion Council, argues that complicated supply chains have hampered industry-wide sustainability efforts.

“When it comes to supply chain visibility, even for the largest corporates, it is a challenge for them to maintain it,” she says, and adds: “[Fashion is] a complicated value chain, from raw materials, to processing, to dying the clothes, to assembly, to distributing and retailing and finally to post-consumption. Even a simple t-shirt will have come through five factories to get to [the consumer].”

Poon suggests supply chain digitalisation, via tools such as ESGpedia, an Asia-focused online data registry that allows companies to record and monitor sustainability activities, means mid-tier fashion producers no longer have the excuse that product-level traceability is only for big brands with the resources to police their supply chains.

“Having a common platform makes so much sense because it allows manufacturers to pivot easily to the requirements of different brands,” she says. “It also means companies don’t have to do their own homework to find out what standards are important to the industry,” Poon adds.

For her, an important step helping the fashion industry take a uniform approach to sustainability would be the synchronisation of the relevant regulatory requirements and industry standards.

“A lot is going on (…) within the textile industry regulations to harmonise many of these [sustainability] challenges that companies are operating under. We hope in maybe three years’ time, there will be a much more harmonised set of standards,” she explains.

2023 could see some important steps being made – with the planned release of global sustainability reporting standards by the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB); and the potential release of mandatory standards for the European Union and in the US, via its Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC).  

Meanwhile, consumer demand for sustainable fashion is also increasing and gradually engineering a more joined up approach by the industry.  

Where once shoppers would rarely question how a product was made, ethically-minded customers are now basing purchasing decisions on what labels tell them about where and how a garment was manufactured – especially if there are reasons to be concerned about elements of the supply chain, such as industrial accidents or human rights abuses.  

This is especially true this year given it’s the tenth anniversary of the Rana Plaza disaster, where an eight-storey garment factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh that supplied several global fashion brands collapsed with an estimated death toll of 1,131.  

Apparel companies, forced into action by the angry media and consumer response, signed agreements with local and global union federations, and civil society organisations to protect Bangladeshi garment workers.   

However, according to the Netherlands-based Clean Clothes Campaign, an alliance of labour unions and non-governmental organisations, “there are still brands who will not support factory safety with the proven industry’s best standard”.  

In 2019, allegations that cotton garments sold on the global marketplace were produced using cotton from forced labour camps of Uyghurs in China rose to prominence. The action group, End Uyghur Forced Labour, issued a call to action for fashion companies to sign up to a list of steps to ensure their supply chains did not include cotton produced by such means.  

As of March 2022, a handful of fashion companies including British online retailer Asos, plus retailers Marks & Spencer and New Look had signed the statement. As of September 2022, the Clean Clothes Campaign said it was in dialogue with dozens more brands including German sportswear giant adidas and US fashion brands The Gap and Levi’s about ensuring their supply chains did not include Uyghur cotton.  

Paola Deda, director of forest, land and housing division at the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), thinks there needs to be more emphasis on how the fashion industry, or parts of it, are trying to become more sustainable so that the wider sector can learn from success stories.  

Referring to the United Nations' 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted in 2015, Deda remarked that SDG 9, which focuses on inclusive and sustainable industry, innovation and infrastructure, tends to be thought of as a priority for heavy industry, “but never fashion”.  

“We hear a lot about how polluting the [fashion] industry is, but never about what it’s doing (…) to change the way it works,” she points out.  

According to Giji Gya Obradovic, head of human security and business at the Hove, UK-headquartered Counter Trafficking Network, the fashion industry needs to work better with national governments in countries with large textile industries to boost sustainability.  

“If the fashion industry isn’t working with countries on their human rights regulation, then [it is] falling down on its sustainability,” she says, adding that once conditions get better in these major garment production centres, the profile of the entire value chain will improve.  

Obradovic also thinks individual fashion brands need a concrete marketing incentive to push for more sustainable practices – one that goes beyond the opportunity to appeal to the growing but still comparatively limited group of ethical consumers.  

Referring to the popularity of Chinese fashion brand Shein (worth an estimated $100bn in 2022, which receives the lowest rating offered by Australian ethical brand directory Good on You for its environmental impact, labour practices and animal welfare standards, Obradovic says consumers still flock to the brand because it is “desirable”.  

She continues: “So, we need to make sustainability in fashion desirable.”  

Simone Cipriani, founder and manager of the Geneva, Switzerland-headquartered Ethical Fashion Initiative (EFI) and chairperson of the UN Alliance for Sustainable Fashion, also thinks some fashion companies need a push in the right direction. “It’s an issue of governance, an issue of putting sustainability at the heart of the company's business model,” he says.