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Water is a vital shared resource for us, and those around us. We depend on sustainable access to water to keep our manufacturing operations running, as an ingredient in our products, to run our heating and cooling systems, and to clean our facilities.

Water: essential to life, essential to health, essential to business

Access to safe water and sanitation, and the sound management of freshwater ecosystems are fundamental to human health, environmental sustainability and economic prosperity.

According to the UN, it's through water that most of the impacts of climate change will be felt - and we're already seeing the effects. Higher temperatures and more extreme, less predictable, weather conditions are changing rainfall distribution, snowmelt, river flows and groundwater, and leading to deteriorating water quality. More flooding and droughts are predicted. And these changes in water availability have already influenced migration and led to political instability.

Water scarcity and climate change are also major risks to our business. They have the potential to disrupt our supply chain, and impact the cost of the ingredients we use to make our products. What's more, water is a critical ingredient for us, as well as essential for the manufacturing process of most of our products. As a result of all these factors, water is one of our most material issues.

Water is also a key focus of the global sustainable development agenda. Our global manufacturing water programme is contributing to UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6: Ensure access to water and sanitation for all. Specifically, we are contributing to target 6.3, on increasing the recycling and safe reuse of water globally, and to target 6.4, focusing on increasing water-use efficiency and sustainable withdrawals.

Managing water risk: a social and business necessity

While water scarcity is an issue on every continent, its impacts - and often its causes - are very local. With the important exception of climate change and its impact on water globally, addressing water scarcity means addressing thousands of local water crises that are affecting water availability and quality. Competing demands, land use change and poor sanitation: these are all threats to long-term water security.

In some regions, water scarcity is already affecting people's lives and livelihoods, as well as their local ecosystems. And our manufacturing operations are not immune. For instance, water shortages in South Africa in 2018 led the city authorities of Boksburg - a manufacturing hub close to Johannesburg - to request industrial support to restrict operations. Secondary impacts of water shortages are also having an effect on energy generation resulting in increased load shedding.

Today, around 40% of our manufacturing sites are located in areas classified as water stressed. It's never been more important to save water and manage water-related risks at our sites in water-stressed areas.

Going beyond our target

By the end of 2019, we had reduced the amount of water our factories use by 47% † per tonne of production versus our 2008 baseline, despite growth in our production volume. We achieved - and surpassed - our 2020 target of reducing the volume of water we abstract by 40% per tonne of production in 2018, two years ahead of schedule. We've achieved this alongside an absolute water reduction of 81.6% since 1995. In 2019 alone, we reduced the absolute quantity of water abstracted by our manufacturing sites by 5.4% per tonne of production compared to 2018.

We have continued to go beyond our target, after having achieved and exceeded it in 2018, two years ahead of our deadline. In 2019, we cut the amount of water abstracted by our factories by 47% † per tonne of production since 2008. This is equivalent to saving around 3.4 litres of water for every person on the planet.

Our water reductions have been delivered through our continuous improvement programme and achieved while meeting competitive financial requirements.

By improving our water efficiency, we're building up our resilience to the impacts of climate change and preparing for a future where natural resources will be increasingly scarce. And despite meeting our 2020 target, we are continuing to drive an aggressive programme on water reductions in our manufacturing - increasing resilience, delivering cost savings and giving our business more agility when it comes to changing market demands.

Changing mindset, changing manufacturing

Reducing water use in our manufacturing operations has meant changing the way we think. In the past, water was widely undervalued by all manufacturers - despite its importance operationally and as an ingredient, it has typically had a low purchase price and been seen as abundant in supply.

That mindset has changed. We are getting better at understanding the costs of water to our business, and seeing how water-related events have an impact on our operations directly or indirectly.

Our water stress assessment process helps us focus efforts in places where water represents a current or short-to-medium term risk to our operations, communities and consumers. We track the water used in water-stressed sites separately, and allocate stretching targets. Monthly performance updates are shared across the business: this greater visibility helps us to maintain focus.

How we're delivering continuous improvement on water

With the insights we gain from our assessment process, we're delivering a structured continuous improvement programme through our World Class Manufacturing Environmental pillar. It includes environmental compliance, optimisation and risk management. Our online 'best practice portal' contains over 600 water-related projects, which are evaluated by a central team and delivered to relevant sites.

While many of these best practices are 'no or low capital', for instance, revised cleaning matrices or improved level controls, some projects require capital investment. We have a sustainability capital programme, which is funded through our internal carbon penalty, and €6 million of the programme is ring-fenced for water-related projects. That means water projects still need to meet our internal investment criteria, but do not need to compete against energy efficiency projects.

As the cost of water rarely reflects its availability, we've given sites in water-stressed areas extended investment criteria, to ensure that we are allocating funding where it is needed the most and enhancing our business resilience through the water efficiency programme.

Examples of projects funded under this initiative in 2019 include:

Rainwater harvesting expansion project to increase capacity by a further 5,500 m³

Optimisation of vacuum pumps systems saving 38,000 m³ of water and 1.1 GJ electricity

Expansion of the metering programme to provide greater granularity of water data

Installation of solar water heating systems which eliminate the need for steam, saving 1,500 m³ of water and 63 tonnes of carbon

Water-saving projects can often help us save energy and support our climate goals, as we're not pumping, heating and treating so much water. This in turn enables more competitive investment criteria and challenges misconceptions that water is cheap. We estimate that the real cost of water - which includes the pre-treatment, heating and wastewater treatment costs - is up to ten times the purchase price of water.

We also promote water reuse and recycling in our factories. For example, at one of our water-stressed sites in Brazil, we have implemented advanced water treatment technology to create a fully circular water process. Water which is used for washing mixing tanks is treated to very high standards, and reused over and over again. This has a significant impact on the water resources needed to run the factory, and means our environmental impact is lower during times of drought.

Our five steps for water efficiency

Water targets that reflect local need

We identify sites in areas of water stress using the World Resources Institute's (WRI) Aqueduct Tool. We support this with media reviews and discussions with our local site teams.

We adopt a contextual approach to our internal water targets in these areas, broadening our focus beyond our factories to consider factors such as community use and local population growth. We track the performance of these sites separately, and the targets are often more stringent. These sites also receive priority funding for water efficiency projects through our sustainability capital fund and activities such as metering, monitoring and targeting have been prioritised in these areas.

By the end of 2019, our sites located in water-stressed locations were 13% more water efficient per tonne of production than the average for Unilever sites.

Protecting water quality

In our manufacturing, a proportion of the water that we abstract is used for activities such as cleaning, heating and cooling. This water is then treated, reused on site where possible, and returned to the environment.

To protect water quality, we make sure that all our manufacturing sites apply high standards for water discharge and meet local environmental regulation. To track performance, we set Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) reduction targets every year as part of our eco-efficiency manufacturing programme.

Beyond our factory: a new start for ponds & canals in Pondicherry

Cutting water pollution and consumption through tea sludge

According to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation (PDF | 2.72 MB), textile production uses around 93 billion m ³ of water each year. Furthermore, 20% of industrial water pollution globally is from fabric dyes and treatments.

But our Ceytea factory in Sri Lanka is working with SLINTEC, a nanotechnology institute, and garment-dyeing and wash firm, Dynawash to transform their waste tea sludge into a suite of natural fabric dyes. The process sees the tea waste segregated, filtered and spray-dried to create the base for tea dye in powder form. This can then be transformed into a range of 15 natural colours to suit textile manufacturers' needs, providing the fashion industry with non-toxic, biodegradable dyes that also cut water consumption.

The dyes, with the brand name T-Hues in a nod to their origin, have been used to dye all the fabric in our Ceytea factory team's uniforms. And workwear is just the start. The T-Hues team are in the process of presenting ranges of naturally dyed scarves, shawls, hoodies and t-shirts to large retailers, including the UK's Marks & Spencer.

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Sustainable water use in our manufacturing operations

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Water is a vital shared resource for us, and those around us. We depend on sustainable access to water to keep our manufacturing operations running, as an ingredient in our products, to run our heating and cooling systems, and to clean our facilities.

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Water is the foundation of all life, and yet global supplies of fresh water are being used up at an alarming rate. The fashion industry relies heavily on water for its own survival. From the irrigation of cotton crops at one end of the supply chain to the domestic washing of clothes at the other, fashion is a thirsty business.

Water usage in the fashion industry

The fashion industry is a huge consumer of water globally. In a world in which around four billion people are already experiencing...

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The fashion industry relies heavily on the use water for its own survival. From the irrigation of cotton crops at one end of the supply chain to the other.

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Global leaders, businesses, and organisations are currently working on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which will be agreed upon in collaboration with the UN next year. Rami Abdelrahman, programme coordinator for the Sweden Textile Water Initiative believes that a dedicated SDG on water is crucial for guiding water resource users towards sustainable management.

Global leaders, businesses, and organisations are currently working on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which will be agreed upon in collaboration with the UN next year. Rami Abdelrahman, programme coordinator for the Sweden Textile Water Initiative believes that a dedicated SDG on water is crucial for guiding water resource users towards sustainable management.

2. "Peak water" is being taken increasingly seriously

For the fashion industry, access to water is essential for cotton cultivation, textile dyeing and finishing. With water use predicted to increase by 50% between 2007 and 2025 in developing countries and 18% in developed ones, there is a growing awareness of the potential challenges that come from increasing competition for this finite resource.

These concerns are translating into collaboration. In Bangladesh, the Partnership for Cleaner Textile (PaCT) brings together buyers, factories and technical specialists to improve its textile wet processing sector. The Better Mill Initiative in China is focused on solutions for the conservation of water and energy, pollution, and improved chemical management. It began as a collaboration between Solidaridad and H&M and has since involved brands including C&A, Primark and New Look.

In Sweden too, a sector wide collaboration is underway between the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI) and around 30 Swedish brands to assess water risk in supply chains and develop industry guidelines for the sustainable use of water resources in processes.

However, it's not all good news as Cate Lamb, head of CDP's water programme points to CDP research indicating that water-related issues are still low on the agenda of business leaders across all sectors.

3. There's a strong business case for the fashion industry to manage its water footprint

CDP's Global Water Report 2013 found that almost 60% of 500 global companies have already experienced the detrimental impacts of water. In 2011 for example, floods in Thaliand forced Intel to cut its revenue forecast by $1bn and Gap was forced to cut its profit forecast by 22% after drought cut into the cotton crop in Texas.

There is a clear business case in water as a cost-carrier of energy, waste and chemicals. As Solidaridad's senior programme manager, Marieke Weerdesteijn points: "if excessive water is used in textile dyeing, it needs to be heated, more process chemicals are needed and [then] after the process treated in the effluent treatment plant. When you add these costs, water saving measures do show a good return on investment."

Often though as Laila Petrie of WWF says, the real business case for responsible water stewardship isn't about profit and loss, but about brand reputation and securing a social licence to operate.

4. Water issues can be a non-competitive space

When it comes to water, fashion brands face the same risks across their supply chains. As Stuart Harker, managing director of the Business Environmental Performance Initiative (BEPI) notes, an inclusive and pragmatic approach is paramount to achieving the fashion industry's water ambitions.

The geographical dispersion of production sites is low and therefore different players can benefit from collaborating on select engagements in priority river basins.

5. There is a broad consensus that production should stay put, rather than move to G20 countries

Some argue that the large-scale production of textiles should move to countries where there is more water, more forms of clean energy and an infrastructure capable of water recycling.

Felix Ockborn, responsible for H&M's corporate water strategy argues that the issue should be looked at more holistically. The textile industry has been key to economic development in many countries and is tied to issues such as job creation and economic empowerment. Although some smaller brands are moving production back to G20 countries, CDP's Lamb believes big brands will lose out on an opportunity to create meaningful action if they walk away.

6. There are alternatives to water thirsty cotton

According to WWF, it can take up to 2,700 litres to produce the cotton needed to make a single t-shirt. The Better Cotton Initiative is trying to minimise this environmental impact by educating farmers on reducing water and pesticide use.

Novozymes meanwhile, has been working on creating water savings in textile processing and its global marketing director Peter Faaborg, says that enzymatic textile processing can save up to 25% of the water traditionally used in cotton textile manufacturing.

Still, cotton is ranked in class E (least sustainable) in the Made-BY environmental benchmark for fibres. Made-BY senior consultant, Ariel Kraten, contends that cotton could be replaced by CRAiLAR, a class B fibre which, like linen, comes from the fast-growing flax plant. CRAiLAR is turned into a fibre more like cotton when spun using a particular enzyme process.

7. Recyling water is technically possible but still faces problems scaling up

The chemicals left in water limit the ability to recycle it, but Levi's recently worked with one of its Chinese suppliers to make 100,000 pairs of jeans using 100% recycled water, so it can be done.

However, water regulation (or lack of it) is a huge determining factor in the speed at which water recycling will gain ground. Weerdesteijn says it is likely to be adopted far faster in China than in Bangladesh, because cleaner production is part of government policy in China, along with a gradual increase in water recycling in specific sectors.

8. Managing the water impacts of dyeing starts with good housekeeping

Through easy, low-cost measures like installing nozzles on hoses, quite a lot of water and energy can be saved. When existing processes are optimised for sustainability, the next step is identifying process modifications such as the use of enzymes or high fixation and low salt dyestuffs.

9. Fashion brands can influence sustainable water use beyond factory walls

By educating and training factory management and workers on sustainable water and energy, typically low-tech solutions such as identifying leaks, fixing broken pipes and reusing heated water can be applied at home and in communities.

10. You have power as a consumer

Beyond fields, factory floors and high street shelves, one of the biggest water impacts of fashion happens at home. Initiatives such as Clever Care and the Sustainable Apparel Coalition's Higgs Index have the potential to increase consumer awareness around sustainable fashion but there are immediate practical steps you can take to minimise your water footprint. You can air instead of wash, choose good detergents and efficient wash programs, and hand unwanted garments into recycling programmes.

WWF's Petrie presents three important questions to ask of your favourite brands: Are they setting targets on managing their supply chain water impacts? Are the moving towards more sustainable raw materials? Are they working with others to address water problems in important river basins?
Read more like this:

10 things you need to know about sustainable agriculture

Shepherding Britain's wool industry towards more ethical pastures

Advertisement feature: The importance of water stewardship in the fashion industry

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10 things you need to know about water impacts of the fashion industry

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Global leaders, businesses, and organisations are currently working on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which will be agreed upon in collaboration with the UN next year. Rami Abdelrahman, programme coordinator for the Sweden Textile Water Initiative believes that a dedicated SDG on water is crucial for guiding water resource users towards sustainable management.

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The new couture: meet the 4 made-to-order Instagram brands reshaping the future of fashion

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Forget about fast fashion. These are the labels that will change your relationship with shopping, forever.

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https://i-d.vice.com/en_uk/article/epdx8j/your-sneaker-habit-is-destroying-the-planet

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https://repository.tcu.edu/bitstream/handle/116099117/22447/Swink__Sarah-Honors_Project.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

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https://www.drapersonline.com/news/burberry-launches-leftover-fabric-scheme

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More than two decades into the e-commerce era, fashion hasn't made much headway in the war on packaging waste.

A T-shirt ordered from an online marketplace today arrives by much the same method as it did in 2011 or 2001: wrapped in plastic bags or bubble wrap, packed inside a cardboard box and shipped on delivery trucks to customers' doorsteps. Mainly, what's changed is the volume: global parcel volumes topped 100 billion in 2019 for the first time, according to Pitney Bowes, a shipping services company, and surged in 2020 as online shopping took off during the pandemic.

Aside from generating piles of trash, packaging also contributes to greenhouse gas emissions - large boxes mostly full of air take up space in delivery trucks, forcing more trips and frustrating brands' efforts to meet climate goals. Plastic bags will sit in landfills for millennia, while even cardboard boxes can emit methane as they break down.

The problem even the most sustainably minded brands run into: cardboard boxes are incredibly good at their job. They cost pennies, are easily stored and assembled, and protect even the most delicate goods on the bumpiest delivery truck. Consumers have spent two decades ripping open online orders and immediately stuffing the packaging in the trash. Convincing them to think about boxes, paper and plastic bags at all - let alone go out of their way to recycle - is a struggle.

A growing number of start-ups and brands want to take the cardboard box out of the equation entirely.

The newest is Olive, a shopping technology and logistics company launching Wednesday that will deliver orders from brands like Everlane, Stuart Weitzman and Veronica Beard in shippers - soft but sturdy crates - that customers can return by leaving outside their front door for the postal service to collect. There is a tradeoff: the totes arrive as weekly shipments (twice weekly in New York), allowing Olive to consolidate orders from multiple retailers at its warehouses.

Nate Faust, Olive's founder and one of the co-founders of Jet.com, the e-commerce site acquired by Walmart in 2016, said consumers will quickly discover other benefits: returns can be sent back with the shippers, for instance.

"There's been a herd mentality in e-commerce [that] convenience equals speed - that is the sole element of the delivery experience that the vast majority of retailers are focused on," he said. "Some of these other factors, consumers don't even realise they could be a possibility because nobody offers them."

Many of the other efforts to eliminate packaging waste also aim for a clean break with some deeply ingrained aspects of online shopping. Some see logistics as the route to greener e-commerce, while others are trying to wean consumers off single-use packaging.

Asket, a Swedish menswear brand, spent over a year redesigning nearly every aspect of its packaging, from the thickness of its cardboard to the size of its return instruction cards. It swapped out plastic garment bags for a greener alternative even though it would slow down garment handling in factories and warehouses - sacrilege in the age of Amazon and fast fashion.

Others are trying to wean consumers off single-use packaging. Brands working with Repack, a Finnish company, offer customers a choice: receive their items in the usual disposable box, or pay a few dollars extra to swap in a mailer designed to be shipped back for a few dozen more trips through the post. The mailers are made from recycled plastic, as are Olive's, but their boosters say by using them again and again they save far more packaging from the landfill than they create.

It's no coincidence that many of these innovations are hitting the market now. Consumers have shown a growing willingness to make small sacrifices for the good of the planet. Businesses from Starbucks to McDonald's switched to paper straws en masse in 2018 amid mounting pressure to address plastic pollution, and cities around the world have banned plastic shopping bags.

"My dad did not bring reusable bags to the grocery store, it was ridiculous. Now when you go to the local grocery store it's the anomaly that you didn't bring your own bags," said Matt Semmelhack, co-founder of Boox, which developed a reusable shipping box used by brands including Boyish Jeans and Ren Skincare. "That's the concept, you start doing it in a small way ... and suddenly it's the norm."
Starting Small, Thinking Big
The question is what it will take to reach that tipping point.

Olive, for one, hasn't actually eliminated cardboard boxes from its shipping process yet. When a customer places an order, the brand first ships the item to the start-up's warehouses in the same packaging that would have gone to homes, and only then are products put into their totes.

Faust said as volumes rise with individual retailers, hopefully sometime in the next three or four months, it will become cost-effective for Olive to start shipping totes directly to brands, meeting the start-up's goal of reducing single-use packaging.

Most sustainability initiatives start out in this sort of limbo, good ideas on paper but requiring too much money or effort on the part of consumers and businesses for all but the most eco-conscious to adopt. The green innovations that go mainstream - solar energy and electric cars to name two - tend to do so once costs drop, and consumers can partake without too much sacrifice.

Sustainable packaging has some elements that are ripe for scale. Much like solar panels and batteries, the cost of recyclable boxes and bags falls sharply as volumes grow. Of course, green power and electric cars also have government subsidies to sweeten the deal for consumers; though cities and some countries have taken steps to ban single-use plastic, e-commerce packaging mostly remains under politicians' radar.

For now, the market is driving change. It helps that many innovations aimed at reducing waste also make items cheaper to ship. Amazon has repeatedly tightened packaging rules for sellers on its marketplace to consolidate items in fewer, smaller boxes, and has even installed machines in some warehouses that create form-fitting packaging for items as they roll down the conveyor belt. Whether the goal was to reduce shipping costs, save the planet, or both, the end result, according to the company, was to use the equivalent of 2 billion fewer boxes since 2015.

Asket estimates that shrinking the size of its boxes and swapping in mailers for the smallest items saves about half a euro per order, which adds up quickly across thousands of purchases.

Polybags, the plastic sheathing used to protect the overwhelming majority of clothing during transit, were trickier. Asket struggled to find a worthy green alternative, eventually settling on bags made from glassine, a type of paper. Even then, the brand had to buy 300,000 bags from their manufacturer - about a year's supply - and convince factories and warehouses to use them.

Asket is still tinkering with its packaging; shipping labels, with their petroleum-derived glue remain a sticky problem. However, the project is far enough along that the brand published its findings on its website to encourage others in the industry to follow suit.

"Most of what we did is definitely applicable to the average industry player," said co-founder Jakob Dworsky. "It doesn't require any unique operational process, it's pretty standard materials and solutions that are readily available."
Convincing Consumers
Nudging shoppers toward more sustainable behaviour is an uphill battle: often it means asking them to pay extra to be mildly inconvenienced. The easier the ask, the better the results.

"The best case scenario is a company takes away all the friction for the consumer, and they [the company] pay for it," said Katherine White, a professor at the University of British Columbia Sauder School of Business specialising in marketing, consumer behaviour and sustainability. "You're not going to change their mind in the middle of the checkout process. There might be other places to change their mind."

That's one reason many sustainable packaging efforts appeal mainly to eco-minded customers. Wealthy shoppers are another potential target. A $3 surcharge goes down easier when paired with a $300 pair of jeans than with a $15 T-shirt. Repack's first US clients included the premium denim label Re/Done and the jeweller Eliou. In Europe, where the service has been around longer, Repack works with Zalando and other mass-market retailers.

The right presentation also helps. Somewhere between 5 and 10 percent of consumers will tick a box on a brand's checkout page to use Repack, said co-founder and chief executive Jonne Hellgren. A US-based brand that instead required customers to choose between the reusable mailer or single-use packaging saw the takeup rate shoot to about one-third.

"This is a new way of behaving ... it's never going to be a thing for everyone," Hellgren said. "Framing is important. Framing in an online environment is even more important."

Boox is testing various incentives to convince recipients of its boxes to return them, including discounts on subsequent purchases and donations to local schools or charities. Olive plans to use app notifications and "very persistent reminders" to get its totes back, Faust said.

The most effective approach to convincing consumers to shop sustainably may be for it not to seem like work at all. That may be possible when it comes to swapping plastic straws for paper ones. But finding alternatives to single-use packaging won't be as straightforward.

"Simple is better," White said. "Unfortunately some of these things need a more complex solution."
Editor's Note: This article was updated on 17 February 2020. A previous version incorrectly described Olive as a marketplace. It is a technology and logistics company. What Beauty Brands Need to Do to Address Their Packaging Problem How the Climate Crisis is Reshaping Luxury What Consumers Really Think About Sustainability
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More than two decades into the e-commerce era, fashion hasn't made much headway in the war on packaging waste. A T-shirt ordered from an online marketplace today arrives by much the same method as it did in 2011 or 2001: wrapped in plastic bags or bubble wrap, packed inside a cardboard box and shipped on delivery trucks to customers' doorsteps.

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Fascination with supply chains has risen drastically in recent years, especially when it comes to the fashion industry. Fast fashion retailers are obsessed with how much they can speed up their supply chain and ethical fashion advocates are focused on asking brands who made their clothes. For every item we buy, there are many hands which took part in making a purchase possible and the supply chain includes each business that comes into contact with that end product.

What is a Fashion Supply Chain?

A clothing supply chain traces all parts of the process, from concept to customer, which go into creating a consumer product. This includes where and what materials are sourced, how they are developed into something larger, and the journey the finished item takes in order to arrive in store or on someone's doorstep. ﻿ ﻿

The first step in the supply chain is the design, and it instructs the rest of the procedure. Materials, silhouettes, trims, and finishings are picked during the design process through research at trade shows, from trend forecasters, and whatever other inspiration is important to a particular brand or designer. Business of Fashion explains that 'inspiration trips are often a starting point for many ready-to-wear designers.' In traditional fashion supply chains, choices are either made based on convenience, cost, or specific aesthetics. Ideas are flushed out through sketching, draping, or the use of CAD (computer-aided design) depending on what "level" of fashion these pieces are being designed for. For high-end designers, it is a lengthier process and more creatively-driven, whereas mass retailers have less creative freedom and less time to make decisions.

The next part of the supply chain is material production and refers to the growing, as well as creation, of the materials which are needed in order to actually produce the clothing designed. In this step, there are multiple smaller pieces which are needed in order to create a textile ready for garment production. The process includes the growing of a raw material, spinning it into a fiber, weaving it into a fabric, dyeing, and finishing it. (Unless something is garment dyed.) Traditional fashion brands normally have a dedicated production manager whose job it is to research farmers, fabric suppliers, dye houses etc. Once the fabric is ready to be used the chain moves on to manufacturing.

Garment production is the part of the supply chain which is discussed the most, because this is where the magic happens. This phase involves usually multiple factories which cut, sew, and finish the clothes designed by the brand. Manufacturing happens mostly overseas these days in countries like Bangladesh, China, and India. Almost all companies, traditional or otherwise, will pull together specific information on how they want their clothing to be made and put it in something called a " tech pack." This part of the supply chain, for mainstream fashion businesses, is all about getting the garments made exactly how they envisioned them so that retailers and customers are not disappointed.

After all of the garments have been made, they are shipped to the brand or designer to sort through and send out. Smaller companies will simply have their team sort, pack, and ship each order from online customers. And, if they have a brick-and-mortar store they will sort and arrange the clothing on the shop floor. Larger brands will often rent out warehouse space in order to do this process for their own stores and online sales, as well as sending their clothing to other retailers. Lastly, mass retailers will do the same on an even larger scale, though for their many stores across the country and world. Fast fashion retailers will also make sure to try and collect data on their customers through their online systems and in-store purchases which they hope to use to sell even more pieces in the future.

In layman's terms this means that the quicker and "easier" the process is to make a product, the cheaper it can be sold. Traditional fashion companies have supply chains which benefit them and not the people who work for them.

How Can a Fashion Supply Chain be Ethical?

An ethical supply chain means thinking differently about clothing from the start. During the design stage, there must be consideration of how all of the elements of the supply chain will affect the earth and its people. From organic or natural materials to the end transportation, an ethical supply chain takes into account the impact their garments will have on the world.

In traditional fashion supply chains, there are over 8,000 various synthetic chemicals used and massive amounts of water wasted. In addition to this, child labor and all kinds of abuse are common in unregulated overseas factories. Many manufacturing hubs ( even in the US) and their contractors often take advantage of their employees and push them to work for little pay, in horrible environments, and at the risk of their own health. While pushing a supply chain to be as "efficient" as possible is great for a huge corporation's bottom line, it is not great for the throngs of people working hard for those companies for very little in return.

Supply chain management has historically referred to a process which reduces costs and improves efficiency, though ethical fashion defines this differently. Ethical supply chain management means that a brand is ensuring proper treatment and pay for the individuals working throughout the system to create a company's product. It means taking more time to investigate the factories, farmers, and other businesses they work with so that they can be confident that their clothing is not adding to environmental damage or slave labor. Ethical supply chains require more money and more work to manage because consumption shouldn't be easy. I've said it before and I'll say it again, nothing in this life is without consequence and sacrificing more resources on the brand's end is a much better option than sacrificing lives.

The final step, which traditional fashion always overlooks, is the consumer phase of the supply chain. While this continues to be a shock to most (even myself), most of the environmental damage caused by the fashion industry happens once the clothing leaves the store and lands in our closets. There are microfibers which land in our water from synthetic clothing, high amounts of energy are used to heat that water, and too much of it is used altogether. While all of these elements may seem negligible on a small scale, they add up quickly. Those microfibers that are released from synthetic fabrics are estimated to make up 15-30% of plastics found in the oceans. Even worse, once our clothes reach the end of their lifecycle, they often end up in landfills.

Although many try to donate their clothing after it no longer 'sparks joy', our world has more clothing than we know what to do with and not enough mainstream technology working to recover them. Most garments that consumers part with end up in dumps, releasing methane emissions in the air and polluting groundwater nearby. Ethical supply chains need to keep all of this in mind when they either provide comprehensive knowledge to their customers or create a product that is able to live out its life without causing any harm. Some brands have started using the Cradle to Cradle business model, yet we need many more to adopt these methods. What we wear and how we wear it makes a huge impact, and I don't just mean killer personal style.

Creating an ethical supply chain is far from easy, but luckily there are various technologies, organizations, and initiatives encouraging fashion companies to become more responsible. Many people are touting blockchain as the new frontier for transparent supply chains and others maintain that real investment is necessary for any large change to happen. At the end of the day, each fashion business must decide what steps it will take towards cleaning up their manufacturing process and not every ethical journey will look the same. What we can be sure of is that transparency is the future, so they better hop on board soon.

Audrey Stanton was born and raised in the Bay Area and is currently based in Los Angeles. She works as a freelance writer and content creator with a focus in sustainable fashion. Audrey is deeply passionate about conscious living and hopes to continue to spread awareness of ethical consumption.

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What Is A Supply Chain And How Can It Be Ethical?

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Fascination with supply chains has risen drastically in recent years, especially when it comes to the fashion industry. Fast fashion retailers are obsessed with how much they can speed up their supply chain and ethical fashion advocates are focused on asking brands who made their clothes.

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In any crisis, particularly the two we happen to be living through at the moment- coronavirus and climate change-we tend to look for a silver bullet, a solution that's both obvious and efficient. How can we fix this right now? When will things go back to normal? Where's the vaccine? With COVID-19, we've seen that "slowing the spread" actually requires a combination of efforts: social distancing, hand-washing, closing non-essential businesses, and, yes, eventually developing a cure or vaccine. Addressing climate change calls for a similar mix of large and small fixes, and the same is true if you zoom in on fashion's footprint. Imagining a more sustainable industry isn't just about organic materials or plastic reduction or producing less or upcycling; it's all of those things, and much more.

One thing that rarely comes up are company KPIs, or key performance indicators; we want to hear about creative and tangible solutions, like botanical dyes or upcycled materials, not metrics. Especially because those numbers are often the barriers to progress: Companies don't want to budge on their sales or bottom line, and they aren't willing to make sustainable changes unless there's a business case for them, hence decades of inaction.

Céline Semaan, the founder of Slow Factory and Study Hall, points out the problem: Those KPIs and measures of "success" are out-of-date and antithetical to our current crises. We have to rewrite those rules so there is a business case for sustainability. Companies have to reevaluate how they measure their success, so it isn't just based on economic performance, but on environmental and social action too. Their values also have to shift beyond just profit and short-term growth, because we're seeing what happens when those are disrupted: Businesses crumble, jobs are lost, and people's physical and mental health are compromised.

"In architecture, there's a stress limit: the tension they test before a building would collapse," Semaan says. "Fashion has never really tested its limit, and the system was already about to collapse. It was so broken, and it wasn't built for resiliency-it was built for economic growth and profit. But the construct of profit and money is man-made-it's our invention, it's a concept. When we build systems around a concept and the inflation of that concept, it's as if you're building a system around a bubble of air. Sometimes that bubble [fills up] and your system feels like it's succeeding, but when it collapses, the entire system around it collapses, because it isn't built around anything real." She continues: "Of course, money is real-it's so real! But what we need to design is a fashion system that has resiliency and sustainability and heart, one that meets the environment where it is, that has a scientific approach, that has respect to human rights. Otherwise, we're just engaging in exploitation [of people and land] at the benefit of profit. That system, as we're seeing now, is not sustainable."

It's possible that those starting new businesses in the years to come will heed Semaan's words. Convincing established and global brands to pivot will be more difficult, particularly the ones more determined to get back to their pre-coronavirus ways of working. Everyone wants things to go back to "normal," but with each passing day, as we get further away from our pre-coronavirus lives, that concept feels less and less likely. In fact, Semaan warns against misinterpreting the recent past: "When we consider something to be 'normal,' it numbs us," she says. "Nothing is actually normal-normal is a construct to justify things [that are happening]. Whatever was 'normal' before was, in fact, being disproved by so many environmentalists and scientists and activists, because nothing about it was normal. So the talk about a 'new normal,' it gives us this idea that a few things will change, but we'll mostly try to keep our lives the same, and that's really scary."

Many of the designers we've spoken to amidst the pandemic seem willing to leave their old ways behind and adapt to the current moment, though it's likely that some are crossing their fingers for a September fashion show, or they're waiting for the green light to ramp up production again. Semaan is urging all of them to at least reconsider their materials and where they came from-right down to the literal roots. Her bold suggestion: "Fashion needs to take a 20-year break from harvesting any crops that aren't regenerative." ( Regenerative agriculture refers to methods that preserve and improve biodiversity in the soil, which then leads to higher yields and a greater amount of carbon drawn into the earth from the atmosphere. "Regular" or degenerative agriculture has led to barren, nutrient-stripped land, which could contribute to greater food insecurity in the future.) "The world is relying on 60 years of topsoil [until we run out] because we've engaged in agricultural models that were degenerative for so long, with pesticides and other methods," Semaan adds. "That's why the fashion industry needs to give the earth a break. Plus, we also have so much available-we need to learn how to use things we already have. The concept is very close to how we managed to rebuild after World War II. At Slow Factory, we just unearthed a manual the British government put together [during WWII] about how to mend and fix your clothes."

In addition to mending the clothes we already own, Semaan is urging designers to consider the full life cycle of their garments-ideally so they can be taken apart or broken down into new yarns. "The designers of the future, they need to know that if you're putting a product out there, you have to know how to fix it for your customers, or you have to know how to disassemble it," she says. The idea is that clothing wouldn't end up in landfills, and eventually, we would only be working with deadstock and regenerated materials. If that sounds less sophisticated or lucrative than our current model of new, new, new, then you're missing the fact that those are two new business models. "Deadstock and waste are two industries we have yet to tap into," Semaan says. Several designers already design predominantly with deadstock or vintage, including Erin Beatty of Rentrayage and Raffaella Hanley of Lou Dallas, and in recent years we've seen a number of textile recyclers emerge, like Evrnu. But getting to a place where those businesses are the norm, not the exception, will require a shift in both our values and in our fashion and design education. That applies both to students and the average fashion fan; brands will have to take on the responsibility of educating their customers, least of all because their customers are going to be demanding answers.

"In 2010, I coined the term 'fashion activist,' because fashion creates culture, and culture creates action," Semaan says. "Fashion has tremendous power in impacting culture, but it also has to [embrace] education on these issues. It's about making education accessible, transparent, and open, the same way fashion is."

That's a key mission for Slow Factory, which is now offering free "sustainability literacy" courses on Zoom for designers and shoppers hoping to learn more. Semaan was excited to report that her first sessions filled up immediately and exceeded her wildest expectations; let's take it as a sign that more and more people are getting serious about this every day. It's fair to assume that in the future, everyone in this industry will need to be highly educated about fashion's environmental and social issues and, more importantly, be willing and ready to adapt.

In our sixth week of quarantine, it's beginning to feel more and more like this isn't just a momentary disruption of our "normal" lives; maybe we're entering an entirely new era of fashion, one we couldn't have even imagined before. Knowledge, creativity, and resiliency will be the new qualities we prize in a leader or colleague. "Fashion is one of the most creative industries, so let's see how creative we can be in solving these issues," Semaan says. "Let's see how avant-garde we can be in addressing the climate."

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"Fashion Creates Culture, and Culture Creates Action": Céline Semaan on the Industry's Role in Times of Crisis

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In any crisis, particularly the two we happen to be living through at the moment- coronavirus and climate change-we tend to look for a silver bullet, a solution that's both obvious and efficient. How can we fix this right now? When will things go back to normal? Where's the vaccine?

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Fascination with supply chains has risen drastically in recent years, especially when it comes to the fashion industry. Fast fashion retailers are obsessed with how much they can speed up their supply chain and ethical fashion advocates are focused on asking brands who made their clothes. For every item we buy, there are many hands which took part in making a purchase possible and the supply chain includes each business that comes into contact with that end product.

What is a Fashion Supply Chain?

A clothing supply chain traces all parts of the process, from concept to customer, which go into creating a consumer product. This includes where and what materials are sourced, how they are developed into something larger, and the journey the finished item takes in order to arrive in store or on someone's doorstep. ﻿ ﻿

The first step in the supply chain is the design, and it instructs the rest of the procedure. Materials, silhouettes, trims, and finishings are picked during the design process through research at trade shows, from trend forecasters, and whatever other inspiration is important to a particular brand or designer. Business of Fashion explains that 'inspiration trips are often a starting point for many ready-to-wear designers.' In traditional fashion supply chains, choices are either made based on convenience, cost, or specific aesthetics. Ideas are flushed out through sketching, draping, or the use of CAD (computer-aided design) depending on what "level" of fashion these pieces are being designed for. For high-end designers, it is a lengthier process and more creatively-driven, whereas mass retailers have less creative freedom and less time to make decisions.

The next part of the supply chain is material production and refers to the growing, as well as creation, of the materials which are needed in order to actually produce the clothing designed. In this step, there are multiple smaller pieces which are needed in order to create a textile ready for garment production. The process includes the growing of a raw material, spinning it into a fiber, weaving it into a fabric, dyeing, and finishing it. (Unless something is garment dyed.) Traditional fashion brands normally have a dedicated production manager whose job it is to research farmers, fabric suppliers, dye houses etc. Once the fabric is ready to be used the chain moves on to manufacturing.

Garment production is the part of the supply chain which is discussed the most, because this is where the magic happens. This phase involves usually multiple factories which cut, sew, and finish the clothes designed by the brand. Manufacturing happens mostly overseas these days in countries like Bangladesh, China, and India. Almost all companies, traditional or otherwise, will pull together specific information on how they want their clothing to be made and put it in something called a " tech pack." This part of the supply chain, for mainstream fashion businesses, is all about getting the garments made exactly how they envisioned them so that retailers and customers are not disappointed.

After all of the garments have been made, they are shipped to the brand or designer to sort through and send out. Smaller companies will simply have their team sort, pack, and ship each order from online customers. And, if they have a brick-and-mortar store they will sort and arrange the clothing on the shop floor. Larger brands will often rent out warehouse space in order to do this process for their own stores and online sales, as well as sending their clothing to other retailers. Lastly, mass retailers will do the same on an even larger scale, though for their many stores across the country and world. Fast fashion retailers will also make sure to try and collect data on their customers through their online systems and in-store purchases which they hope to use to sell even more pieces in the future.

In layman's terms this means that the quicker and "easier" the process is to make a product, the cheaper it can be sold. Traditional fashion companies have supply chains which benefit them and not the people who work for them.

How Can a Fashion Supply Chain be Ethical?

An ethical supply chain means thinking differently about clothing from the start. During the design stage, there must be consideration of how all of the elements of the supply chain will affect the earth and its people. From organic or natural materials to the end transportation, an ethical supply chain takes into account the impact their garments will have on the world.

In traditional fashion supply chains, there are over 8,000 various synthetic chemicals used and massive amounts of water wasted. In addition to this, child labor and all kinds of abuse are common in unregulated overseas factories. Many manufacturing hubs ( even in the US) and their contractors often take advantage of their employees and push them to work for little pay, in horrible environments, and at the risk of their own health. While pushing a supply chain to be as "efficient" as possible is great for a huge corporation's bottom line, it is not great for the throngs of people working hard for those companies for very little in return.

Supply chain management has historically referred to a process which reduces costs and improves efficiency, though ethical fashion defines this differently. Ethical supply chain management means that a brand is ensuring proper treatment and pay for the individuals working throughout the system to create a company's product. It means taking more time to investigate the factories, farmers, and other businesses they work with so that they can be confident that their clothing is not adding to environmental damage or slave labor. Ethical supply chains require more money and more work to manage because consumption shouldn't be easy. I've said it before and I'll say it again, nothing in this life is without consequence and sacrificing more resources on the brand's end is a much better option than sacrificing lives.

The final step, which traditional fashion always overlooks, is the consumer phase of the supply chain. While this continues to be a shock to most (even myself), most of the environmental damage caused by the fashion industry happens once the clothing leaves the store and lands in our closets. There are microfibers which land in our water from synthetic clothing, high amounts of energy are used to heat that water, and too much of it is used altogether. While all of these elements may seem negligible on a small scale, they add up quickly. Those microfibers that are released from synthetic fabrics are estimated to make up 15-30% of plastics found in the oceans. Even worse, once our clothes reach the end of their lifecycle, they often end up in landfills.

Although many try to donate their clothing after it no longer 'sparks joy', our world has more clothing than we know what to do with and not enough mainstream technology working to recover them. Most garments that consumers part with end up in dumps, releasing methane emissions in the air and polluting groundwater nearby. Ethical supply chains need to keep all of this in mind when they either provide comprehensive knowledge to their customers or create a product that is able to live out its life without causing any harm. Some brands have started using the Cradle to Cradle business model, yet we need many more to adopt these methods. What we wear and how we wear it makes a huge impact, and I don't just mean killer personal style.

Creating an ethical supply chain is far from easy, but luckily there are various technologies, organizations, and initiatives encouraging fashion companies to become more responsible. Many people are touting blockchain as the new frontier for transparent supply chains and others maintain that real investment is necessary for any large change to happen. At the end of the day, each fashion business must decide what steps it will take towards cleaning up their manufacturing process and not every ethical journey will look the same. What we can be sure of is that transparency is the future, so they better hop on board soon.

Audrey Stanton was born and raised in the Bay Area and is currently based in Los Angeles. She works as a freelance writer and content creator with a focus in sustainable fashion. Audrey is deeply passionate about conscious living and hopes to continue to spread awareness of ethical consumption.

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What Is A Supply Chain And How Can It Be Ethical?

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Fascination with supply chains has risen drastically in recent years, especially when it comes to the fashion industry. Fast fashion retailers are obsessed with how much they can speed up their supply chain and ethical fashion advocates are focused on asking brands who made their clothes.

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We've collated easy sustainable fashion tips from experts on the subject to help you dress more mindfully.
We'd all like to dress a little more mindfully, and in order to reverse some of the startling statistics about clothing waste, we need to be more conscious of what we're buying. However, it can be confusing to know where to begin to make our wardrobes more sustainable because there are a lot of complexities. But if you want to start taking steps to make your wardrobe more considered, it's important to know what the fashion equivalent is to buying a reusable bottle and using metal straws.

"Consumer-facing coverage of sustainability often focuses on either disastrous environmental and ethical news or future purchasing behaviour, which can leave us feeling either powerless to make a difference as individuals or confused about where to start," sustainability expert Brooke Roberts-Islam of Techstyler says. There are, however, small changes that are steps in the right direction, from the things to look out for on clothing labels to how you should actually be washing your clothes. I spoke to nine experts who are inciting change in the fashion industry this year to discover their easy tips for making your wardrobe more sustainable.

1. Wash Your Clothes Less and Avoid the Tumble Dryer

"My top tips for becoming a more sustainable consumer are to wash your clothes less. Research by the Energy Saving Trust has shown that laundering accounts for 60% to 80% of a garment's total environmental impact, so you can significantly reduce your impact even by washing your clothes after every few wears. To further save energy, wash your clothes at 30º (this is reported to reduce energy usage by up to 40% compared to the standard 40-degree wash) and dry them naturally. Saving energy means reducing the burning of oil and gas and, ultimately, a reduction in the contribution to the rise in global temperatures causing climate change," says Roberts-Islam.

2. Organise Your Wardrobe

"Organise your wardrobe and look after what you have so you can celebrate the pieces that you love. If you can actually see what's in your closet, you're much more likely to be inventive when styling outfits, meaning you're less likely to buy new pieces. There is so much value in having less. With less, our minds are calmer and our headspace is clearer," says sustainability expert and ambassador Venetia La Manna.

3. The Ex Test

"One of the most conscious ways to shop is simply to buy things you only intend to wear time and time again that you will value and make last. One of the silliest but most effective ways I have found to consider how to do this is to ask yourself, 'Would you want to run into an ex in the garment? Would you feel confident and assured and good about yourself?' If not, don't buy it. Simply cutting down on what we buy allows us to have a small, considered and hopefully more sustainable wardrobe," says Cora Hilts, founder of luxury sustainable platform Rêve en Vert.

4. Try to Always Buy Organic Cotton

"Try to avoid fabrics that use microfibres-these fabrics often end up polluting the oceans and are difficult to clean up because the particles are so tiny. Alternatively, choose organic or GOTS-certified cotton. GOTS-certified cotton is monitored from the point of growth, monitors the fair trade of the farmers and the consumption of water, regulates pesticides used and on a whole, monitors the full supply chain. Ensure you always do your research, but try to ensure fabrics are taken from a source that can be replenished, and always, always recycle!" says Nia Jones, co-founder of Good News.

5. Never, Ever Throw Clothing in the Bin

"Vivienne Westwood said it best: 'Buy less. choose well. Make it last,' and I believe in this. Choose pieces that you absolutely love and ones you know you'll keep forever. It's also important to think, 'Repair before you replace.' Small rips, holes and missing buttons can easily be fixed. Make friends with your cobbler. Quality shoes can be worn for many seasons with a small investment in maintenance. Also, never throw clothing away. Clothing that is placed in regular garbage is either incinerated or ends up in a landfill. If you don't wear something anymore, it can always make somebody else happy. If it can't be worn anymore, it can be recycled. In every Sézane Appartement, there is a collection point called La Grande Collecte (the Grand Collection), where you can donate your old pieces to give them a second life," says Sézane founder Morgane Sézalory.

6. Ask Brands Questions When You Aren't Sure

"I think knowing the origin and how it reaches its final product is a good starting point. If you are making a decision on a purchase, go out of your way to find out the story and process behind it. Ask questions and discover for yourself. The more knowledge you have, the more informed you will be to make the right choice. For us, whenever we design a product, we are always thinking of the origin and process behind each element that goes into our products. We are trying to shine a light on this through our social media because it's important to be aware of this-not just as a business, but for consumers too. We know we aren't perfect, but we are trying our best to ensure we are conscious of the sustainability of our business," say Wicker Wings co-founders Belinda and James Yu.

7. Alter Pieces You Already Own

"Rediscover the connection you have with the clothing you already own. Start a love story with a piece of clothing that needs a new life, embroider into it, and redefine what new means to you!" says Jemma Finch of Stories Behind Things.

8. Buy Things With Longevity in Mind

"Don't impulse or one-wear buy. It's worth investing in pieces you really love that are made from high-quality materials and will stand the test of time-pieces that you'll genuinely want to keep forever. Orlagh [McCloskey] and I love the timelessness and cyclicality of vintage; that's essentially what we want Rixo to be for our customers: future vintage," says Rixo co-founder Henrietta Rix.

"We don't follow trends when we desig

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10 Easy Ways You Can Make Your Wardrobe a Little More Sustainable

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I spoke to nine experts who are inciting change in the fashion industry. Discover their easy sustainable fashion tips for a more mindful wardrobe.

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Can the fashion industry ever be sustainable? 

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Can the fashion industry ever be sustainable? 

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Fashion accounts for around 10% of greenhouse gas emissions from human activity, but there are ways to reduce the impact your wardrobe has on the climate.

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6 ways to revamp the fashion supply chain in a post-pandemic world

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Now is the time to redesign the clothing supply chain - and trust, transparency and traceability must be the guiding forces, according to Accenture's Lynda Petherick. related to Apparel, Manufacturing, Retail, Social & environmental responsibility, Sourcing,

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https://www.raconteur.net/sustainability/cleaning-fashion-supply-chain/

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The fashion industry has arguably grown into one of the world's most needlessly polluting, wasteful, energy-intensive and inefficient industries. Its supply chains are so fragmented, vast and distant that many retailers are unaware of how their fabrics are made, and who runs the factories that supply them. This dislocation is all the more concerning now that the life cycle of a garment is known to be far more environmentally damaging than previously assumed.

Microfibres shed from washing synthetic materials are estimated to account for 15 to 30 per cent of plastics found in the oceans, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Almost 65 per cent of all garments end up in landfill or are incinerated, releasing toxic chemicals as just 1 per cent are recycled, according to Wrap (Waste and Resources Action Programme). Global garment production, meanwhile, has doubled over the last 15 years, says the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, with supply vastly outstripping demand.

"The fashion supply chain, in all its discombobulated glory, is a problem in itself," says Orsola de Castro, co-founder of the transparency index Fashion Revolution. "It is as inefficient as it is opaque. It is designed to hide rather than proclaim."

Moving fashion production from home shores was the beginning of the end

This wasn't always the case. Less than 30 years ago, most luxury fashion brands in Europe owned the factories that made their clothes. Garments for Armani, Dolce & Gabbana and Bottega Veneta were made in northern Italy. England's textile industry thrived in Leicester, Manchester and Bradford. People could smell the leather tanneries, and see the factories and cotton mills. "The minute we moved the fashion industry from our shores, we lost touch," Ms de Castro says.

Corporate transparency is the first step towards raising universal standards across the industry and holding companies to account. It is impossible to police and prevent environmentally damaging processes if they are unknown, Fashion Revolution says. Its annual index ranks 150 fashion companies according to their public disclosure of sustainable policy and commitments, governance, traceability and remediation efforts. Encouragingly, this year industry-wide transparency has improved 5 per cent, but even so, only ten brands - adidas, Reebok, Puma, H&M, Esprit, Banana Republic, Gap, Old Navy, C&A and Marks & Spencer - scored more than 50 out of 100.

Overcoming entrenched business processes and corporate norms is a challenge even for companies committed to reform. "If you imagine a large design house, there is no relationship between the design studio and the sourcing team - that in itself is indicative," says Ms de Castro.

Major fashion brands are moving towards sustainability

Several fashion companies are consulting with sustainable advisory firms, and investing research and development into alternative production methods and materials. In early-2018, adidas released a new sneaker line in collaboration with Parley for the Oceans that is made from fibres recycled from waste plastic. The luxury fashion conglomerate Kering has made commitments to cleaning its supply chain, by implementing the Natural Resources Defense Council-implemented Clean by Design programme across its brand suppliers.

Several fashion companies are consulting with sustainable advisory firms, and investing research and development into alternative production methods and materials

Sustainable ranges from high street brands, such as Zara's #JoinLife, H&M's Conscious and ASOS Africa, carry a slightly higher price point and take slightly longer to produce, but are traceable and use environmentally friendly fabrics and processes. Tellingly their designs also tend towards classic minimalism over current trends. These efforts represent a step in the right direction, Ms de Castro acknowledges, but she says such standards should be the norm across these multinationals.

For consumers concerned about their environmental impact, small and medium-sized fashion brands founded on sustainable business processes represent the best bet. Reformation and Everlane in the United States are entirely vertically integrated and made onshore, so waste is minimised and labour and environmental practices are above board. Others are nimble enough to provide closed-circle services, such as T-shirt company For Days which replaces stained or damaged T-shirts with recycled new ones.

Rolling ranges, produced onshore, could be the way forward

Jenny Houghton, founder of Fashion Enter, based in Haringey, London, provides support on running a sustainable business for young fashion brands. She maintains that retailers and factories "need to be joined at the hip and work as one". Like many of the industry's critics, Ms Houghton identifies its relentless season-driven focus as creating systemic inefficiencies, which are amplified if retailers buy in bulk from overseas. "Suppliers in China tend to want long production runs of 5,000, which require commitments of nine months ahead on production," she says.

Rolling ranges produced onshore, she believes, are the way forward. "A good buyer will squeeze the life out of a best-selling garment - changing the colour or print, adapting it for a specialty section such as 'petite' or 'maternity'. It is all about reaction to consumer demand," she adds. This approach favours smaller runs of 800 to 1,200 units compared with an average of 3,000, which is far more sustainable from environmental and business perspectives. "The retailer is not overbuying a style and therefore not contributing to landfill or discounting," says Ms Houghton.

Consumers need to take responsibility along with brands

The UK may have stringent labour regulations, but if enforcement is lacking malpractice thrives. Compliance tools, such as voluntary audit Fast Forward, forensically interrogate the legal, labour and ethical standards throughout a company's supply chain. Launched in 2016 by auditing company Complyer and used by the likes of ASOS, it follows all company transactions and tracks payments to staff.

Other technologies help companies to make ethical procurement decisions. Blockchain services offered by London-based Provenance enable companies to trace and certify their supply chain. Cloud-based system Galaxius t racks supply chain activity from fabric orders to garment delivery and enables performance-related pay calculations that can result in garment workers earning up to £17 an hour.

The fashion industry is changing, but people also need to take responsibility for their consumption choices. The average piece of clothing in the UK is kept for 3.3 years before it's discarded, according to Wrap. Sustainability campaigner Livia Firth invites consumers to consider whether they would wear an item at least 30 times before they commit to buying it. "We need to acknowledge that as consumers our wardrobes are part of the supply chain," Ms de Castro concurs.

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Fashion procurement needs to start thinking sustainable

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The fashion industry has arguably grown into one of the world's most needlessly polluting, wasteful, energy-intensive and inefficient industries. Its supply chains are so fragmented, vast and distant that many retailers are unaware of how their fabrics are made, and who runs the factories that supply them.

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WHAT HAPPENS INSIDE A FACTORY? See Our Factories & Come to Meetings!

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Government addresses Xinjiang forced labour concerns

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Government addresses Xinjiang forced labour concerns

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SHANGHAI, China - In many ways, the rise of modern China has been an allegory of globalisation. Today, as countries turn inward to battle the coronavirus pandemic, the idea of a complex supply chain or even one that relies on a single market far from home is seen by many as an untenable risk.

The global fashion industry actually spent much of the past decade trying to break up with Chinese manufacturing in order to escape this dangerously co-dependent relationship. It has made some progress, but China remains an enticing powerhouse with manufacturing infrastructure and attractive supply chain assets that have proven difficult to divorce from.

Although garment manufacturing, especially cut and sew, has largely decamped to cheaper markets around the world, fashion hasn't been able to kick the habit of sourcing raw materials, trims, and more from China, even as labour prices in the country continue to climb and tariffs introduced as part of US President Donald Trump's trade war continue to bite.

The idea of a complex supply chain or even one that relies on a single market far from home is seen by many as an untenable risk.

According to several experts from China's fashion manufacturing, sourcing and supply chain management spheres who were interviewed by BoF, approximately 60 percent of the world's fashion is still produced in China, if you take into consideration raw materials, fibres, textiles, trims, and accessories, such as elastic, zippers and hang tags.

"Most [other] countries' garment industries aren't fully self-sufficient; they rely on getting components from China," explained Melanie DiSalvo, founder of Virtue + Vice, a consultancy set up to help boutique fashion brands clean up their supply chain.

Her work is concentrated in India and China, but she says people might be surprised to learn how much of the material being put together in Indian factories is actually sourced from China.

"There is a huge trade going on where denim is coming from China," she added. "India is getting all its silk from China, too. I think people don't realise, all the trims and elastics are impossible to find in India; it all comes from China."

This continued dependence on China came to a head in the early months of this year, when the country became the first to experience a widespread outbreak of the coronavirus, causing its factories to close and crucial cogs in the fashion supply chain to grind to a halt. Brands that had largely offshored their supply chain out of China initially felt vindicated, having saved themselves from the supply side disruption of what was then mistakenly considered to be just a local epidemic.

"I would say relative to a lot of the industry, we are hedged in China more than a lot of our peers," Levi's Chief Executive told supply chain managers at the Retail Industry Leaders Association conference at the end of February. The company reduced its manufacturing in China from 16 percent in 2017 to between 1 percent and 2 percent in 2019, largely to escape trade war-induced tariffs. Bergh added that the move had shielded the company from that initial coronavirus hit, even as stores in China remained shut.

Today, we know that no-one and nowhere is shielded from the coronavirus pandemic. Fashion brands that had moved more of their supply chain out of China, to markets such as Bangladesh and Vietnam, found supply was disrupted there in turn.

Fashion brands need to start planning for the post-pandemic phase of business now.

Though in many cases, that supply-side disruption mattered less than the demand disruption caused by retail closures around the globe, leading many major fashion brands to cancel orders amounting to around $6 billion in Bangladesh alone, according to the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) and its knitwear counterpart association the BKMEA. Meanwhile, current season inventory sits idle in stores, warehouses and distribution centres.

But now, even as production is halted in most places around the world, China is open for business and producing the orders that have not been cancelled. Manufacturers here face an uncertain future as business from overseas becomes scarcer, mitigated only somewhat by demand from growing domestic fashion brands looking to move their way up the value chain.

While the move of production out of China has largely been about rising costs and the razor thin margins of mass garment production making it an unsustainable choice, the trend has also been an exercise in diversification to mitigate future risks.

The coronavirus pandemic has highlighted how reliant the world is on China for vital supply chain links, especially for medicines and personal protective equipment, as dozens of countries concurrently grapple for both. As a result, there is growing pressure for the pharmaceutical industry in Europe and North America to be repatriated.

Similarly, fashion companies, especially American ones, are likely to feel the pressure to "decouple" from China in an election year which promises to be heavy on anti-China rhetoric.

With so much in flux in the midst of the ongoing pandemic, it is too early to know exactly how fashion's post-coronavirus supply chain will change, in terms of its reliance on China or many other factors currently collectively weighing on the industry. Nevertheless, fashion brands need to start planning for the post-pandemic phase of business now.

In this uncertain time, BoF turned to experts in Chinese manufacturing, sourcing and supply chain management for advice about what brands should consider before making any big decisions.
Gerhard Flatz, managing director of KTC Limited, a high-end performance wear specialist based in Guangdong Province, manufacturing for niche European brands and Chinese designer Yang Li.
"It doesn't matter if its in China, Cambodia, Bangladesh, Myanmar, America, or God knows where; we have to leave this macro environment and create a micro environment. I envisioned this is 2008 when I took over the company. We increased our cash reserves and upgraded our product offering. We saw even back then that China would become too expensive, brands would shift their sourcing focus to Southeast Asia and what is left in China is the premium piece of the cake. A diversified supply chain means a lot of manpower and a lot of uncertainty, so we have to come back from this extended workbench concept."
Yossi Nasser, chief executive of leading intimates manufacturing supplier, Gelmart International
"Having the supply chain flexibility to reshore to China now, while Bangladesh and India are experiencing lockdowns is key. In the near term, there is going to be this element of reshoring [to China], but [brands] don't want to be caught out in the situation many companies have just faced [as part of the US-China trade war] where a tariff can [be] put on your product with [only] 30 days notice. If [brands] strategically put some of the supply chain back to China [now then don't] make it a ditch to ditch, aggressive move. Maybe centralise [most operations there] and then use diversified sources [for] sewing and cutting, so if there is a supply chain disruption, you are able to flexibly and quickly scale up one production source and de-emphasise another."
Melanie DiSalvo, founder of Virtue + Vice, sustainable supply chain consultancy, previously product developer for companies including Walmart, Target, Ralph Lauren, and Levi's.
"China was set up to make things. The infrastructure is there and everything just works. If I was a struggling brand, I would want to be in a country like that, where things are set up to move and you are going to have the least amount of issues along the way. You need to be focusing your money and staff and attention on rebuilding your business. Supply chain diversification is a long-term goal but I don't recommend the brands I work with jump right into that because everyone else is closed and China is still going. That's the reason some of my brands are surviving right now. That's not something to walk away from."
John Evan, managing director of Tractus Asia, a strategy and operations management consulting firm.
"You are going to continue to see a decoupling, politically, it's clear that [the US and China] would each like to have less reliance on the other. I think you will continue to see companies looking at [manufacturing in] China for China, then nearshoring or reshoring back to their own countries, especially for fashion and apparel. The other thing that has been highlighted by Covid-19 is [the trouble with having] too many eggs in one basket. All of a sudden, risk mitigation has gone from people thinking it's kind of important, to the US-China trade war when people realised it was really important, to now when it has become the number one concern."
Hilmond Hui, vice president of Bombyx, a specialist sustainable manufacturer that provides silk fabrics to big name eco-brands including Everlane, J Crew and Madewell.
"On-shoring for the US and European brands will likely take a back seat, especially in our industry, due to priorities lying in restarting retail and the economy. In my own opinion, off-shoring from China fractures the supply chain to a point where it can create a lot of logistic and information stress and inefficiency. Consolidating supply chains can be done by partnering with vertical operations across different materials or product categories. By doing this, the suppliers have the opportunity to be more flexible in their own set up because they control more of their supply chain, and have more room to spread out their production and finances."
Anson Zhou, spent more than a decade as a senior merchandising manager at industry giant Li & Fung before becoming a freelance consultant in sourcing and supply chain management for clients including Macy's, JC Penney and Tommy Hilfiger.
"Most retailers and brands are unsure about the market situation [but] obviously, the order size is going to be much lower compared to last year. [The best strategy is] to try some small orders and put the products on the market and see the reaction and make a quick decision on a re-order. That means they need quicker speed in their supply chain management. Southeast Asia, Bangladesh or Myanmar are focused on huge quantities and long delivery times. If we focus on quick delivery in 45 days, even 25 days, that makes China the big player, [so] international brands will have to look to China because they lead the way in that."
These interviews have been condensed and edited. Prada Kickstarts Luxury 520 Campaigns
Superstar Cai Xukun stars in Prada's latest campaign for China's May 20 Valentine's Day equivalent (known as 520, the numbers in Mandarin sound similar to the phrase, "I love you"). There are several Chinese Valentine's Days scattered throughout the calendar but 520 has quickly risen to become perhaps the most important for driving gifting, especially this year as sales remain weak in the wake of China's coronavirus outbreak. Prada was the first luxury brand out of the box this year with a digital campaign that sees Cai adding up his actions: "100 hours thinking of you," "12 new songs written," "85 attempts to pick the perfect gift," and so on, until he gets to the magic number of 520. (Prada Press Release)
Chinese Beauty Businesses Pivot Online During Pandemic
For Maggie Fu, a Shanghai-based make-up artist and beauty influencer, the widespread stay-at-home orders in China at the start of the outbreak created an opportunity. With tens of millions of manicure enthusiasts unable to visit nail salons, Fu decided to create a stick-on, DIY manicure kit that delivers salon-quality nails, with no skill required by customers to apply them. Yue Xiaolin, a fellow make-up artist, professional stylist and the founder of Lin Makeup, pivoted to conducting online classes, designing professional courses for make-up stylists and an everyday beauty tutorial option for cosmetics enthusiasts. (South China Morning Post)
Tmall to Launch Luxury Outlet
Tmall has launched its "Luxury Soho" channel, marking the Chinese e-commerce giant's entrance into the luxury outlet business. The new initiative, in parallel with Alibaba's Luxury Pavilion, is expected to increase the digital footprint of high-end brands in post-coronavirus China. Currently, brands such as , Giuseppe Zanotti, and Versace are available on the outlet channel.
JD.com to File for $2 Billion Second Listing
Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com has filed confidentially for a second listing in Hong Kong, according to people with knowledge of the matter, joining rival Alibaba in tapping the city's stock market for funds.The offering could raise at least $2 billion, the people said, asking not to be identified because the information is private. The Beijing-based company, which currently trades on Nasdaq, has a market value of $64 billion.
China's Online Population Reaches 900 Million
The number of people using the internet in China reached 900 million in March, an increase of 75 million from the end of 2018, according to a report from the China Internet Network Information Centre (CNNIC) released this week. Today, 710 million people shop online, an increase of 100 million compared to 2018. Online payment users total 768 million, up from 600 million, with 765 million making payments via mobile phone. (China News Service)
Dolce & Gabbana Swim Against Tide in Hong Kong
Recent months have brought news of one luxury brand after another shuttering sizable retail locations in Hong Kong, with steep rents more and more difficult to justify in the wake of ongoing political unrest hampering tourism from China, followed by the worldwide coronavirus pandemic, hampering tourism from everywhere else. Dolce & Gabbana have bucked that trend by revamping and reopening its flagship store on Hong Kong's Canton Road - a show of confidence in Hong Kong's local luxury consumers. (Fashion Network)
China's Pinduoduo Invests $200 Million in Appliance Retailer
The move marks Pinduoduo's first strategic investment after it raised $1.1 billion in a private share placement in March. According to a statement, the strategic partnership will strengthen Pinduoduo's position in the household appliances and electronics sector, as well as strengthening its omnichannel proposition through Gome's 2,600 offline retail stores across 776 cities across China. (Tech in Asia)
May Holiday to Test Chinese Appetite for (Domestic) Travel
China's upcoming Labour Day public holiday will run from May 1 to 5, and average airfares for Chinese travellers are about 30 percent lower than they were last year, according to a report from Alibaba Group's travel agency Fliggy. Around 90 million people will embark on trips during the extended holiday, about double the number who travelled during the Tomb Sweeping holiday earlier this month, according to a separate report published yesterday by China's largest online travel agency Trip.com. (Yicai Global)
Date Set for China's Most Important Political Gathering
After its original March date was pushed back due to China's coronavirus outbreak, China's joint sessions of the country's National People's Congress and Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, colloquially known as the Da Liang Hui (or two big meetings) are now set to start on May 21 and 22. China ratifies major legislation and unveils economic targets at these meetings, which see 5,000 delegates descend on Beijing for at least 10 days.
China Decoded wants to hear from you. Send tips, suggestions, complaints and compliments to our Shanghai-based Asia Correspondent casey.hall@businessoffashion.com.

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Where Should Fashion Brands Manufacture Now?

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SHANGHAI, China - In many ways, the rise of modern China has been an allegory of globalisation. Today, as countries turn inward to battle the coronavirus pandemic, the idea of a complex supply chain or even one that relies on a single market far from home is seen by many as an untenable risk.

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The pandemic has made uncertainty and disruption the new normal. Successive lockdowns are accelerating radical shifts in fashion's business model and as the industry scrambles to recalibrate, the supply chains that sustain it are breaking down.

Suppliers typically operate on a lead time of 90 to 120 days, meaning orders placed by Western retailers in the more optimistic late summer and autumn period are about ready to be shipped. From March onwards, there will be hardly anything to produce, said Mostafiz Uddin, managing director of Denim Expert Limited, a denim supplier in Chittagong, Bangladesh. The darkening outlook as new variants of Covid-19 spread during November and December meant few clients placed orders ahead of Christmas. One month of retail closures can reverberate through the supply chain for six, and with lockdowns ongoing in major markets, there is little respite on the horizon.

"Every single day we sit in front of the TV, and we forget that we are in Bangladesh," Uddin said. "We think, "OK, how many people died in the UK today, and when is the lockdown ending?' ... Because our life depends not on the conditions [here], but on the conditions in the Western world."
The Human Cost of a Race to the Bottom
The industry is already under intense strain. Many brands simply cancelled orders when first faced with lockdowns last year, refusing to even pay for goods that had already been shipped. The shock to the garment supply chain was swift and devastating.

By July, about 400 manufacturing firms representing 150,000 jobs had suspended operations in Cambodia, according to industry manufacturing associations and the European Chamber of Commerce in the country. In Bangladesh, the world's second biggest garment exporter after China, 348 factories closed between March and April 2020, according to its manufacturers and exporters' association. A recent survey of suppliers found that orders for the current season were down 30 percent compared to last year.

Essentially [brands are] asking the factory to make products for free.

With orders only trickling in, manufacturers are also facing a pricing squeeze. More than half the suppliers in a survey of 75 across Asia, Africa and the Americas, conducted by Penn State University's Center for Global Workers' Rights and the Workers' Rights Consortium, said they had accepted some orders below cost since the pandemic started.

"Essentially [brands are] asking the factory to make products for free," said Ayesha Barenblat, founder and chief executive of ethical fashion campaign group Remake. "In many ways the humanitarian crisis for garment workers continues to deepen and widen."

With businesses squeezed, labour costs are the first to be cut - and the wider social and economic consequences are far-reaching.

"The apparel sector is such an important sector for workers who are entering the formal economy for the first time," said Tara Rangarajan, who sits on the management team of the International Labour Organisation's Better Work programme. With the garment industry suddenly shrinking, there's a risk of its predominantly female workforce entering less formalised, or more exploitative forms of employment, she said. "That's why it's so important that we don't let the pandemic lead to worsening conditions but rather allow it to be a wake up call."
A New Reality
The pandemic is not the only pressure point on fashion's traditional supply chain. The rise of ultra-fast, online-only fashion companies is playing havoc with manufacturers' business model, and the changing retail landscape is likely to feel long-lasting and far-reaching consequences.

Where traditional retailers would make large orders of each style, their more nimble, digital competitors have found success in a test-and-repeat model, ordering limited runs and swiftly doubling down on styles that sell. For factories, it's a costly planning nightmare; the pivot to smaller, quicker inventory restocks could make sourcing from countries like Bangladesh and Pakistan - where lead times are longer and order minimums are relatively high - less attractive to buyers.

Manufacturers are caught shouldering much of the cost of uncertainty, with inventory volumes and associated labour requirements increasingly difficult to predict. "Those components of supply chain which have historically been much more formulated ... are now going to change, [with] speed being the name of the game," said Yossi Nasser, chief executive of lingerie supplier Gelmart.

But as the industry consolidates, some are finding ways to pivot.

Manufacturing giant TAL Apparel, which makes clothes for brands includingLacoste and Patagonia, is known for making dress shirts and formalwear, but it was a 50-million-piece order for masks "that saved us" during the pandemic, said chief executive Roger Lee. Over the last year, the company accelerated plans to close its two costly manufacturing facilities in Malaysia and launched a consumer-facing mask brand.

We're changing from supply chain to demand chain.

Others see opportunity in adapting to the fast-paced needs of ascendant, digitally native brands. Sean Coxall, a former executive at supply chain solutions giant Li & Fung, launched his company, 707, in January to offer supply chain solutions to direct-to-consumer upstarts.

"We're changing from supply chain to demand chain," he said. "If you're a factory, you need to forget the old way of asking for 100 days' lead time... you know everything needs to be a lot more flexible and agile right now."

Gelmart, known for its white-label products, has set up a venture arm for new or up-and-coming brands looking for funding and technical know-how. Unlike many suppliers left high and dry by a dramatically changing retail landscape, Nasser sees opportunity and leverage in the fast-paced demands of digitally native brands.

"The market's driving them to focus more on growth, [so] they wouldn't mind paying, let's say 30, 40, 50 cents more per item to capture that sale, so they could generate more revenue growth," he said. Nasser is betting even traditional retailers will focus on placing orders with a quicker turnaround amid the e-commerce boom.

But while the opportunities may be real, so is the cost of the ongoing shakeout. The ability for manufacturers to adapt is uneven, favouring vertically-integrated multinational suppliers or small players withsavvy storytelling and a unique selling point.

Elsewhere, suppliers are getting squeezed and the changes are exacerbating longstanding socio-economic inequality and uneven power dynamics in the globalised fashion system.

"The current model... showed its true colours when the pandemic hit," said Rangarajan. "[It] isn't one that is sustainable and it isn't one that we can rely on for the social and economic development of producing countries, or the workers themselves."
Related Articles: Clothes Retailers Cut Orders While Factories Fight To Survive Where Should Fashion Brands Manufacture Now? The Year Ahead: Consumers to Seek Justice in the Supply Chain

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In Fashion's Global Supply Chain, a Ruthless Race to the Bottom

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The pandemic has made uncertainty and disruption the new normal. Successive lockdowns are accelerating radical shifts in fashion's business model and as the industry scrambles to recalibrate, the supply chains that sustain it are breaking down.

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Designers love to talk about their obsession with the latest eco-friendly fabric, and brands tout their certified green stores. But the biggest opportunities to reduce fashion's impact on the planet are found in far less glamorous places.

Take your typical cotton T-shirt. The cotton is grown on a farm and spun into yarn, which is then woven into a textile, dyed and chemically treated, then cut and sewn into a garment for sale in stores.

Each of those steps is referred to in the industry as a "tier," with the cotton farm at the beginning - Tier 4 - and the workers that produce the finished product at the end - Tier 1. It's the step just before the garment factory, Tier 2, where fabric is dyed and treated, that tends to be the dirtiest. About 45 percent of a garment's emissions come from this segment in the supply chain, compared with 16 percent in Tier 1, according to the Apparel Impact Institute (Aii), an industry group that works with suppliers on sustainability.

"Tier 2 of the supply chain is where a lot of the negative environmental impact happens," said Lewis Perkins, the group's president. This is because facilities use vast amounts of water, heat and chemicals to dye and treat garments, often using equipment powered by coal.

Climate activists say weaning Tier 2 suppliers off of coal is a must if the fashion industry is to meet emissions targets in line with The Paris Agreement, the international accord meant to keep global temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees.

Yet these facilities are rarely mentioned when brands embark on sustainability drives. One problem: fashion companies rarely interact directly with Tier 2 suppliers, and have less influence over what sort of equipment they use, or how they source their power.

"We typically work directly with our Tier 1 suppliers" said Agata Smeets, director of global sustainability at Gap, Inc. "We don't write purchase orders to our Tier 2s, but we know that water, energy and chemicals are a much bigger issue there, especially in our dye houses."

To rectify this, Gap is among the several brands and retailers to partner with the Aii to engage some of its Tier 2 suppliers in making sustainable changes to its factories. Gap says it has sponsored on-the-ground assessments at 30 percent of its strategic Tier 2 suppliers, representing more than 40 percent of the company's total business at this stage of the supply chain.

It's also harder to wow shoppers with tales of a dye factory that switched from coal to natural gas.

"It's fun to talk about mushrooms being used for synthetic leather... but if you follow the [numbers], it's just a lot less exciting for your carbon commitments," said Linda Greer, who founded the Clean by Design programme in 2010, which has since been rolled into the Aii.
Low-Hanging Fruit
Turning a roll of undyed cotton red or neon green is a resource-intensive process.

"It is not natural for a dye or a finish to affix to a material, and so it takes enormous amounts of steam and energy to make that happen," said Maxine Bédat, founder and director of sustainability think tank The New Standard Institute.

There are ways to reduce those costs. The Aii's Clean by Design programme recommends 10 steps such as stepping up leak detection, recovering heat from hot water and exhaust gas and improving pipe insulation. She said some energy efficiency measures pay for themselves, sometimes in under a year.

It is not natural for a dye or a finish to affix to a material, and so it takes enormous amounts of steam and energy to make that happen.

The Aii says the average supplier spend on energy, water and carbon improvements amounts to $200,000. But within 12 to 18 months, participating mills see as much as a 10 percent reduction in carbon dioxide output, 20 percent less water used and an average of $440,000 in annual savings, the organisation found.
Funding Substantial Change
As Greer and Perkins see it, the easy fixes are a "gateway drug" for facilities to take bigger steps towards more substantial operational changes, such as coal-free boilers, dyeing processes that require less water, or solar panels.

These next steps are neither cheap nor easy, requiring investments of upwards of $1 million, says Perkins. The Aii is currently working with HSBC to put a number on the total investment needed to eliminate coal and adopt renewable energy sources in the apparel supply chain.

While brands will often hire an expert to assess how a facility can become more efficient, the suppliers must typically pay for the changes themselves.

Some mechanisms exist for suppliers to take action on their own. In Vietnam, China and India, some garment manufacturers use power purchase agreements, long-term contracts to buy renewable energy, which can encourage suppliers to build more clean energy capacity. Brands, which often have higher credit ratings than their suppliers, could help this process along by backing these agreements, the Global Fashion Agenda and McKinsey said in a 2020 report.

The fastest way to convince suppliers to reduce emissions would be for brands to pay for it, experts say.

"If brands were to ... truly partner financially, by sharing some of the gross profit margin that they receive with the supply chain, the supply chain can then innovate," said Dio Kurazawa, co-founder of sustainable supply chain consultancy Bear Scouts. "They don't have to be pushed to innovate, or pushed to do something that is more green."

Short of profit sharing, brands can publicise when suppliers adopt energy efficient techniques, which could drum up additional business and create incentives for competitors to make similar changes.
Stalling Progress
When the Apparel Impact Institute first incorporated Clean by Design in 2019, the plan was to engage a total of 1,000 facilities in the programme within the first five years. As of now, the number stands at over 200, and the Institute's programmes as a whole have saved 380,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions and 12 million cubic metres of water to date, it said.

Despite counting fashion and retail heavyweights (including Target, PVH, Puma, Levi's, Stella McCartney, Gap, Burberry, Lululemon and VF Corp.) among its programme partners, uptake has been slow. Some experts pin this down to the industry's competitive mindset.

"Brands are competitors, and there's a lack of cooperation," said Tyler Chaffo, sustainability manager at RFID labelling and supply chain solution company Avery Dennison.

The money that's really in this for these factories - the real money - is in more orders.

The pandemic has further slowed progress - the Institute only reached 40 new facilities through the Clean by Design programme last year, and a further 49 through a separate decarbonisation project,compared to its baseline target of 120.

But there is optimism that the tides are turning, as industry players become more accustomed to the idea of supply chain traceability, collaborative target-setting and a growing sense of urgency to meet ambitious emissions targets within this decade.

The Aii's funding (a mix of corporate partner payments and philanthropic grants) has remained steady in 2020. The organisation tentatively expects increased engagement from corporate partners and faster rollout of the programme in the supply chain over the coming year. It has also launched a new initiative with Kering, Burberry and Stella McCartney to help Italy-based manufacturers coordinate, fund and scale more sustainable processes.
The Incentive Gap
Funding is a key barrier for suppliers to successfully engage in sustainability programmes, but it is not the only one. While easy fixes laid out by Clean by Design can promise six-figure savings within as little as 12 months, it is not enough to make a strong business case, argues Greer.

"The money that's really in this for these factories - the real money - is in more orders," she said. "The business value is in getting a larger market share, becoming a more strategic supplier to that brand. And until brands ... [recognise] that, I just don't see how any of these programmes are really going to succeed."

The lack of self-reporting, transparency, or even positive publicity from brands about how exactly they incentivise more sustainable suppliers is also part of the problem, said Bédat. "We have heard that directly from facilities, with great frustration ... saying, 'We have made these upgrades, it was costly to us, and we've gotten nothing out of it.'"

From easy wins like insulating pipes and recovering wastewater, to purchasing electric boilers and renewable energy, the infrastructure for cleaning up the most polluting stage of the supply chain is already established, but the onus has fallen on suppliers - not the brands they serve - to find the cash and business case for their implementation, which Bédat believes has got to change. "These technologies are there," she said. "It's just a matter of doing the work."
Related Articles: Fashion Loves Carbon Offsets. Are They Enough? In Search of a Business Case for Sustainability Will Fashion Ever Be Good for the World? Its Future May Depend on It.

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Fashion's Untapped Opportunity to Fight Climate Change

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The biggest sources of emissions are hidden deep in the industry's supply chain. Here's how some brands and activists are looking to fix that.

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Best sustainable clothing brands: 30 fashion-editor-approved labels to have on your radar

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Shop the brands doing their bit to build a better tomorrow.

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Some good figures on wages world wide

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When considering sustainability in the supply chain, the first concepts that typically come to mind are solutions like green warehouse space or fuel-efficient trucks.

Sustainability in the supply chain extends much further than that. In retail, for instance, the clothing and fashion industry have the opportunity to progress through building a more sustainable approach.

The current clothing retail climate is somewhat dominated by fast fashion, a practice of mass-producing clothing items cheaply, so they can be sold in the most cost-effective way possible.

To make their products this inexpensive, companies typically must hire underpaid workers and forego using clean, innovative materials.

Given the current state of the industry and the rise of fast fashion, sustainability will be key to sparking change within the fashion industry in upcoming years.

This article will detail three major benefits of moving away from fast fashion in 2020.

Sustainable fashion has the potential to have very positive impacts on the planet, both in terms of cultivating greener production practices and introducing labor equality to your procurement processes.

For instance, it may be cheaper to use polyester to create clothing. Customers are also used to purchasing goods made using that material. However, because polyester isn't made like cotton or hemp, synthetic materials aren't as good for the planet as other textile options.

According to Forbes, polyester clothing items can take up to 200 years to decompose. Your company will be contributing to the betterment of the environment by searching out more innovative, natural fabric options.

Currently, the fashion industry accounts for a total of 8% of all greenhouse gasses emitted into the atmosphere.

Ridding your production practices of synthetic materials won't necessarily help mitigate climate change on its own. It's recommended that supply chain leaders discover methods of incorporating renewable energy into production mills. This innovation will have a direct effect on carbon emissions.

As of now, according to Stand, Earth's fashion climate scorecard, very few companies are in the green on climate change mitigation.

Source: Stand.Earth

Levi's is one of the few companies that has been successful in cutting their supply chain off of fossil fuels while others are failing to do the same. This includes about 70 members of the Sustainable Apparel Coalition.

Adopting sustainable practices also contributes to labor fairness, safety and equality. Fast fashion has contributed to increases in child labor, slavery and deaths resulting from working conditions.

Oxfam found that most companies could easily afford to absorb the cost of providing living wages to all workers operating within their supply chain, but many fail to do so.

Source: Oxfam

By simply tracking all of your workers' wages throughout the supply chain, you can significantly contribute to the overall health and sustainability of your supply chain.

Common practices within the contemporary fashion supply chain industry cause harm to both the environment and workers involved in the production process. Your company can take steps to change that through sustainable fashion.

The fashion industry is responsible for the second-highest amount of pollution in the world, and that can't be changed without innovating on current practices.

Business owners around the world have already recognized this and started developing new technologies to address the pressing challenges threatening the planet.

In her interview with Forbes, Megan Eddings discusses her proprietary sustainable textile that she developed through her company Accel Lifestyle. She indicates that innovative textiles can help move supply chains away from harmful synthetic materials.

"Microplastics are a huge concern for not only the environment but also our health," she said. "Sustainable fashion takes into account the entire supply chain and life cycle of a garment, from where and how it is made to when it ends up in our landfills."

Edding's second point is vital to consider. While she's focusing on promoting renewable materials, there are several other links in the supply chain that determine how sustainable the operation is as a whole.

In short, an entire supply chain can't rely on renewable resources alone to carry your business toward sustainability. You have to innovate and boost efficiency across your business as a whole to make a change.

Technology can assist you in making sure that you're operating your business as efficiently as possible. It also helps you keep track of your inventory, worker payroll and shipments. Leverage these technologies to spot weak points in your efforts to become more sustainable. From there, you'll be better equipped to run a leaner, greener sustainable company.

Catalyzing change requires thinking outside of the box. Determine your path to innovating your processes for sustainability by effectively utilizing supply chain management technologies.

That way, you'll have no trouble linking isolated, sustainable bright spots together and constructing a greener supply chain.

Consumers are aware of the negative ramifications of fast fashion and the moral dilemma involved in purchasing goods produced utilizing those processes.

Because of this wide-spread awareness, it's in the best interest of companies everywhere to adopt sustainable practices to appeal to your audience. According to research on customers in the US and United Kingdom, over half (52%) of consumers want the industry to become more sustainable in the near future.

While consumers understand that this may cost more money, making the items less appealing for purchase, they're also voicing recommendations to companies, detailing how they'd like to see them address sustainability. Those in favor of more sustainable options requested that supply chain companies do the following:

Label sustainably-made clothes

Offer discounts on sustainable clothing

Allow customers to trade in second-hand clothing for store credit

Make sustainably-made clothes the default search results in online stores

Advertise sustainable products outside of your online store

Companies that adopt these practices show that they care about promoting products that are best for the world around them. This, in turn, will turn consumers into loyal customers.

Showcase your supply chain's bright spots by promoting them to your customers. They want to see your business go green, so keep them updated on your progress toward that goal.

It isn't enough to take one single sustainable practice that only affects one link of the supply chain.

Because of the inherently interconnected network that the supply chain has become, all operations affect each other. It's essential to take measures to incorporate sustainability into all aspects of your business.

You can do this by focusing on innovation and optimizing your internal technological solutions. That will assist you in helping the planet, both from an environmental and labor-focused perspective.

Lastly, your customers want you to be sustainable. Listen to their feedback to include them in your journey to a greener future.

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Why Sustainable Fashion is Key to Supply Chain Sustainability

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When considering sustainability in the supply chain, the first concepts that typically come to mind are solutions like green warehouse space or fuel-efficient trucks.Sustainability in the supply chain extends much further than that.

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Drapers article on Hirestreet CEO and her plans to reduce consumption with pre loved clothing to buy and designer clothing to hire.

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The fashion industry is known for creating trends, and now it's working on its most important trend yet: sustainability. And unlike some questionable fashion decisions, this is a trend all consumers can get behind. We know even Nordstrom is now selling used clothing. Everyone is starting to wake up to the fact that the consumer preference has changed, and she wants more eco-friendly products.

Increasingly, customers want to have a positive impact on the environment. Research shows that 88% of consumers want brands to help them be more environmentally friendly. Yet, fashion is notorious for its wasteful practices that are hurting the environment. Fashion production releases 10% of the world's carbon emissions, more than international flights and maritime shipping combined. The fashion industry is responsible for 20% of all water pollution worldwide. If the fashion industry continues on its current path, it will produce 26% of the world's carbon footprint by 2050. Clearly, something needs to be done to remedy the situation and disrupt the industry.

Here are 10 fashion companies leading the way in sustainability. These companies, large and small, show the potential for sustainable fashion that looks good and does good.
Rothy's
From their materials to production to the way they treat their employees, Rothy's has been sustainable since day one. I personally have two pairs of Rothy's I love walking around in, especially speaking on stage at business events. I am pregnant and comfort is everything. Also, as I learned on the Rachel Hollis podcast "Rise," they are made from 100% recycled plastic water bottles and post-consumer recycled materials.
Tentree
For each item purchased, Tentree lives up to its name and plants 10 trees and even gives customers a code so they can track the growth of their trees. It is on track to plant one billion trees by 2030. Tentree's clothing is made from ethically sourced and sustainable materials including cork, coconut and recycled polyester and produced in ethical factories.
Everlane
Everlane mixes sustainability with transparency by sharing with customers the exact breakdown of the cost of each item and showing the factories where garments are made. The company builds strong relationships with factory owners to ensure that the employees and production meet Everlane's high ethical standards. Everlane also recently released a line of clothing made from recycled plastic bottles and other reused materials.
Pact
This Colorado-based company sells certified organic and fair-trade clothing for the entire family. The entire supply chain, from growing and harvesting the non-GMO cotton to creating the final pieces, is as sustainable and clean as possible and includes processes that use significantly less water than traditional cotton. Pact also reuses old clothing and linens to create many of its items.
Patagonia
Patagonia not only uses sustainable materials in its outerwear, but it also helps customers repair their clothing instead of buying new items. Patagonia follows fair-trade practices and closely monitors its supply chain to make it safe for the environment, workers and consumers. Its goal is to find solutions to environmental issues without causing unnecessary harm to the world. Because the products are so durable, customers are encouraged to recycle old Patagonia gear and purchase items second hand.
Levi's
Denim is notorious for requiring huge amounts of water to create one pair of jeans, but Levi's new collection, Water<Less, uses up to 96% less water. For this and all of its products, Levi's is committed to sustainability through the entire design and manufacturing process, including working towards 100% sustainably sourced cotton and recycling old jeans into home insulation.
H&M Conscious
H&M is moving away from its fast fashion roots with the Conscious collection, made of materials like organic cotton and recycled polyester. By using eco-friendly fabrics and more sustainable production methods, the company hopes to reduce its environmental footprint. Customers can also recycle unwanted garments at H&M stores and get a discount for a future purchase. As a whole, H&M has a goal to use only sustainably sourced materials by 2030.
Reformation
Each stylish item from Reformation comes with a description and score of its environmental footprint to help customers understand the impact of their clothing. The pieces are made of upcycled and sustainable materials in fair wage environments. Reformation has been carbon neutral since 2015 and helps protect deforested areas to offset its manufacturing. Customers can also sell their old clothing to Reformation to earn credit for new pieces.
Amour Vert
This clothing brand makes sustainably sourced garments in smaller batches to avoid the waste of unsold items. Amour Vert partners directly with mills to ensure items are made using non-toxic dyes and the most sustainable fabrics. For every item purchased, Amour Vert plants a tree. The company also follows a zero-waste policy and finds creative solutions to recycle and reuse items.
Eileen Fisher
Every aspect of Eileen Fisher's design and manufacturing process is built to be as sustainable and eco-friendly as possible, from the materials used to the ethical treatment of the workers who sew the pieces. The company avoids air shipping and uses creative processes to limit fabric waste. Eileen Fisher buys back used items to recycle into new garments or turn into art if the clothing can't be resold.
People Tree
Founded in 1991, People Tree was one of the first sustainable fashion brands. It is the only brand credited by the World Fair Trade Organization and invests heavily in sustainable and environmentally friendly practices, including organic farming. People Tree promotes fair wages and good working conditions and uses sustainable materials like organic cotton, natural fibers and chemical free dyes.

Consumers are looking to move away from fast fashion to more environmentally friendly options that are as stylish as they are responsible. These companies show that even small improvements to the materials and processes can create a major and much-needed change in the fashion industry.
Blake Morgan is a customer experience futurist, keynote speaker and the author of the bestselling book The Customer Of The Future. Sign up for her weekly newsletter .

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11 Fashion Companies Leading The Way In Sustainability

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The fashion industry is known for creating trends, and now it's working on its most important trend yet: sustainability. And unlike some questionable fashion decisions, this is a trend all consumers can get behind.

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Ethical Fashion is an umbrella term to describe ethical fashion design, production, retail, and purchasing. It covers a range of issues such as working conditions, exploitation, fair trade, sustainable production, the environment, and animal welfare.

Why is Ethical Fashion needed?

The high street clothing industry accounts for a massive share of Western retail. Every year, 100 million shoppers visit London's Oxford Street alone.

Globalisation means that materials and labour can be purchased in different parts of the world where costs are very low. Also, industrialised methods of growing cotton mean that fabrics can be produced quickly and cheaply, and in very large quantities. These savings are passed on to the customer, meaning that high street fashion is available at increasingly low prices, and much of it is regarded as disposable.

However, Ethical Fashionistas would argue that all this has a cost that we are not able to see on the price tag.

Some of the issues around Ethical Fashion

Ethical Fashion aims to address the problems it sees with the way the fashion industry currently operates, such as exploitative labour, environmental damage, the use of hazardous chemicals, waste, and animal cruelty.

Serious concerns are often raised about exploitative working conditions in the factories that make cheap clothes for the high street.

Child workers, alongside exploited adults, can be subjected to violence and abuse such as forced overtime, as well as cramped and unhygienic surroundings, bad food, and very poor pay. The low cost of clothes on the high street means that less and less money goes to the people who actually make them.

Cotton provides much of the world's fabric, but growing it uses 22.5% of the world's insecticides and 10% of the world's pesticides, chemicals which can be dangerous for the environment and harmful to the farmers who grow it. (Ethical Fashion Forum)

Current textile growing practices are considered unsustainable because of the damage they do to the immediate environment. For example, the Aral Sea in Central Asia has shrunk to just 15% of its former volume, largely due to the vast quantity of water required for cotton production and dying. (Ethical Fashion Forum)

Most textiles are treated with chemicals to soften and dye them, however these chemicals can be toxic to the environment and can be transferred to the skin of the people wearing them. Hazardous chemicals used commonly in the textile industry are: lead, nickel, chromium IV, aryl amines, phthalates and formaldehyde. (Greenpeace)

The low costs and disposable nature of high street fashion means that much of it is destined for incinerators or landfill sites. The UK alone throws away 1 million tonnes of clothing every year. (Waste Online)

Many animals are farmed to supply fur for the fashion industry, and many people feel that their welfare is an important part of the Ethical Fashion debate. The designer Stella McCartney does not use either fur or leather in her designs. In an advert for the animal rights organisation PETA, she said: 'we address... ethical or ecological... questions in every other part of our lives except fashion. Mind-sets are changing, though, which is encouraging.'

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Ethical Fashion is an umbrella term to describe ethical fashion design, production, retail, and purchasing. It covers a range of issues such as working conditions, exploitation, fair trade, sustainable production, the environment, and animal welfare. The high street clothing industry accounts for a massive share of Western retail.

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Sustainability in fashion is a complex issue for consumers to understand and the industry to fix. The problem is compounded by a vague marketing approach adopted by some brands, while the real solution lies in a multi-pronged approach from consumers, industry and the government, says Roit Kathiala, who looks at how best to balance consumer sentiment and supply chain realities.

The fashion industry - or the sum of the clothing, leather, footwear and accessories sectors - is one of the oldest industries known to man and to a large extent is a basic necessity. Like most industries over the years it has been consuming raw materials, producing goods that customers need, with these products being disposed after use and mostly finding their way to landfill.

However, now come the new paradigms: population growth and disposable fashion.

World population Growth

Source: World Population Prospects: 2017 Revision by UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs

High birth rates in large parts of the world, low infant mortality, longer life expectancy, increased food production and improved public health, coupled with technological advances, have caused the world population to rise steadily. Indeed, the world population is projected to reach 9.8bn by 2050, and 11.2bn by 2100.

So not only do we now have a lot more people to make clothing for, but the resources needed to make this happen are in finite supply, as well as in direct competition with other necessities like growing food, clean drinking water and shelter.

The challenges of population growth are not unique to fashion, but have already had some serious impacts on this industry.
Disposable fashion
The term disposable fashion defines the culture of excessive buying habits where fashion products are discarded before the end of their life. The world now buys more clothing than ever before. The average American throws out 68 garments in a single year, and other countries are no different.

Fast fashion is labelled as being responsible for this issue, but I suggest an alternate way of looking at it. Fast is the speed with which one does things, and speed on its own is not always bad. In other words it is possible to have fast fashion that is sustainable. The true culprit is disposable fashion.

Cheap prices and perhaps even fashion cycles of 12-14 seasons a year may have made a contribution here, but the root cause is consumption habits that mean we tend to dispose of fashion products without having worn them completely to the end of their life or purpose. Usually a deterrent like cost, taxes or legislation influences consumer behaviour, yet this hasn't touched the consumption of fashion products.

Researchers say fashion lags behind food and beauty when it comes to get consumers engaged because there's less of a personal investment and generally people are more motivated by personal impact rather than environmental. With food, it's something that goes in your body; and with beauty, it goes on your skin; while clothing is one step removed.
The impacts
Here are just a few of the impacts:

Natural resource allocation and depletion: For example, the trade-off between allocating water and land to growing cotton, or for drinking water, or for food crops, or forests or trees needed to make viscose.

The use of dyes and chemicals and their untreated percolation to the surrounding environment is causing damage to local ecosystems.

Global warming caused by the use of energy to manufacture - especially the energy intensive processes of conventional dyeing, finishing and fabric production.

Global warming from emissions generated by transporting raw materials and finished goods through supply and distribution chains. The global nature of the fashion supply chain means it is not unusual for a wool fleece to be shipped from Australia to China for cleaning, then transported to Italy to be made into fabrics, which may then be shipped back to China to be made into garments, before heading back to Europe or North America to be sold. A few or all of these journey legs could be by air, multiplying the emissions caused.

Product to landfill: The rise of disposable fashion has caused a significant increase of textile waste in landfills. Research conducted by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has found that textile waste increased from 1.76m tonnes in 1960 to 16m tonnes in 2015, a rise of 811%. In the corresponding period the population in the US grew by 81%.

Depending on the research, fashion is anywhere from the second to the fifth most polluting industry in the world. An alarming statistic at any level, and one the industry has to address. But how?
The solve
Before we dive into what the solve could look like, let's for a moment talk about what it isn't.

Minor tweaks but major marketing: It is frequently claimed that new products and sometimes entire businesses are sustainable, but more often than not closer inspection reveals they are merely a tweak of the regular product or production process and many times not even that.

Misleading information and "greenwashing": Brands sharing partial or even incorrect information on what makes their product sustainable. For example, substituting cotton with polyester in a dress may save lots of water used in the production process, but there is never a mention that now the product will not biodegrade when it is ends up in landfill. Or in another example, fake down may be better in some aspects like animal (bird) welfare over natural down, but it also does not biodegrade. So how do we decide which product is more sustainable?

Sustainability in fashion is a complex issue for consumers to understand, and the vague and incomplete marketing approach adopted by some brands adds to the complexity rather than help the solve.

For fashion brands and retailers the solve will need to be a multi-pronged approach:

1: Invest in innovation and use sustainable products in collections
Traditionally fashion firms have focused on using innovations provided by their suppliers and predominantly designing into these fabrics and raw materials. To move towards a sustainable future successful fashion companies will need to collaborate with their complete supply chains - not just their immediate Tier-1 suppliers but upstream fibre suppliers and farms - and encourage and reward sustainable practices through purchases.

2: Reduce waste, improve efficiency within manufacturing, and drive circularity
An easy win to be sustainable is to do more using less resources, and re-use resources. Today's textile supply chains still have a lot of wastage in each step of the process starting from fibres, spinning, weaving, dyeing, cutting fabrics, garment processing, and end-of-season leftovers. Cumulatively this waste can sometimes be up to 30-40% of the fibres that started from the farm. Building reverse supply chains of used products to be recycled upstream in the supply chain is an easy win for companies.

3: Utilise digital tools and data to plan and execute better in the supply chain
In the digital era more and more data is available from customers, and gathering this data and sharing it along the supply chain in real time will help reduce the amount of wasted resources: over-production causing waste and under-production leading to air freight. An example of how delay in buying and planning signals through the supply chain can cause big swings in inventory in response to shifts in customer demand is exemplified in what is called the Bullwhip effect. The further and more disconnected the step in the supply chain is from the final consumer, the more variance there will be in production predictions, hence leading to waste.

This common phenomenon in long-winded global supply chains can be bridged with digital technology where dynamic and transparent information based on actual customer behaviour can be passed along the supply chain to reduce this Bullwhip effect.

4: Invest in new technology and scientific innovation in production methods
Fashion supply chains are largely fragmented and located in capital-scarce and underdeveloped countries. High competition and thin margins do not leave much capital for the whole supply chain to invest in improving production technology to be more sustainable. Brands and fashion companies can play a more active role, and currently lag many other industries in assigning a part of their profits to R&D into production methods rather than new products and styles.

Governments are, albeit slowly, playing a part in the solve, whether it is China's drive in 2017/2018 to enforce environmental regulations - which is estimated to have penalised over 30,000 companies and 5700 officials - or the EU's Packaging and Packaging Waste directive. These are examples where focused governmental action has acted as a catalyst for quick change on sustainability.

All three prongs - customer preferences and behaviour, industry efforts, and increasing government regulation - mean a sustainability focus will be key for successful fashion companies of the future.

The prize for the brand that can deliver both profits and sustainability is bigger than ever before, with the total global fashion market forecast to grow from $1.7 trillion to $2.2 trillion by 2025.
About the author: Roit Kathiala has led sourcing, production and manufacturing teams with some of the leading global fashion retailers in Europe, Asia and North America. In addition to his years of industry experience he is also a consultant on sourcing and supply chain issues and has helped a number of leading retailers chart their product and supply chain strategies.

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Sustainability in fashion supply chains - the road ahead

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Sustainability in fashion is a complex issue for consumers to understand and the industry to fix. The problem is compounded by a vague marketing approach adopted by some brands, while the real solution lies in a multi-pronged approach from consumers, industry and the government, says Roit Kathiala, who looks at how best to balance consumer sentiment and supply chain realities.

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LONDON -- Sustainability in fashion is a hot button topic, with retailers large and small racing to prove their green credentials, but the desire for new attire churns and the industry remains one of the world's largest polluters as climate activists and watchdogs sound alarms.

The industry is the second largest consumer of water and is responsible for 8-10% of global carbon emissions, more than all international flights and maritime shipping combined, according to the United Nations Environment Program.

"So, for example, it would take 13 years to drink the water that is used to make one pair of jeans and one T-shirt," said Fee Gilfeather, a sustainability expert at the nonprofit OXFAM. "It's just an incredible amount of environment al resources that are required for making the clothing that we wear."

Harmful chemicals, global transport of goods and non-biodegradable packaging add to the environment al cost. The combined impact has put the industry under scrutiny among consumers who want to know where - and how - their clothes are produced. They're demanding ethical practices and responsible retailing.

Some manufacturers and retailers have found innovative solutions, both large and small.

At the high end of the market, designers are keen to make sustainable fashion synonymous with luxury. In 2015, a sustainability report by Nielsen found that 66% of consumers are willing to pay more for environmentally friendly clothing. At the low, fast fashion end of the industry, promises have been made.

Inditex, the retail giant that owns Zara, announced a sustainability pledge in July, saying it wants all its clothes to be made from sustainable or recycled fabrics by 2025.

In addition, the global fashion sector addressed climate change by launching the Fashion Industry Charter for Climate Action at the COP24 climate conference in Katowice in December 2018. Leading fashion brands, retailers, supplier organizations, a major shipping company and global NGO WWF International have agreed to collectively address the climate impact of the industry across sectors. Patricia Espinosa, the executive secretary for UN Climate Change, said the charter comes at a time when "we needed it most." The charter recognizes the crucial role of fashion as a contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, with multiple opportunities to reduce emissions. It hopes to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 and notes a number of issues: decarbonization of the production phase; selection of climate friendly and sustainable materials; the need for low-carbon transport; and improving consumer dialogue and awareness.

The scale of the charter is vast, but activists are up against behemoths at times.

In Britain, the Environmental Audit Committee reported on the problem earlier this year and found that the U.K. buys more clothes than any other country in Europe, throwing away 1 million tonnes annually with 300,000 tonnes (over 661,000,000 pounds) going to incinerators or landfills. The EAC, chaired by Member of Parliament Mary Creagh, concluded that fashion retailers should take responsibility for the clothes they sell. The Committee called for a producer responsibility scheme for textiles, which would add a small amount to the cost of each item, raising money to invest in recycling centers to divert clothing from landfills and incineration. The British government, then led by Prime Minister Theresa May, rejected all the committee's proposals, much to the dismay of Fashion Revolution, a global movement calling for greater transparency, sustainability and ethics in the fashion industry.

"That set us back 20 years at the very, very least. It is inexcusable and frankly, unforgivable," said the organization's creative director and co-founder, Orsola De Castro. "Some of those recommendations, you'd think why would you not take that into consideration? And the reality is that the U.K. government in this occasion has also looked very out of touch because we are seeing quite a lot of policy change happening, for instance, in France. And it seems that them not getting up to speed on this is a terrible thing."

The industry has other problems as well. It has been accused of unethical labor practices, though the tide began to turn after the Rana Plaza disaster in 2013, when an eight-story building containing a garment factory in Dhaka, Bangledesh, collapsed and killed 1,134 people.

"We're seeing a huge rise in public demand over not just better products, but better buying habits. And we're looking at a generation that is applying scrutiny, that is wanting to know that brands are accountable. And obviously transparency has been really on the rise ever since the Rana Plaza disaster," De Castro said.

But significant change throughout the industry, coupled with mass consumer action, has yet to come, she said.

"Real effective changes? I don't think we're seeing any particular impact, but look, when it comes to awareness, massive difference," De Castro said.

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Sustainability in the fashion industry faces an uphill climb

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LONDON -- Sustainability in fashion is a hot button topic, with retailers large and small racing to prove their green credentials, but the desire for new attire churns and the industry remains one of the world's largest polluters as climate activists and watchdogs sound alarms. The industry is the second largest consumer of water and is responsible for 8-10% of global carbon emissions, more than all international flights and maritime shipping combined, according to the United Nations Environment Program.

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The process of producing clothing in the fashion industry is for the most part hidden away from the public eye. While it is easy to see the leaps and bounds that are taking place every day in the retail industry for example, which we can experience with a few taps of our phone or a quick trip to the store, production is usually done far away from the consumer, leaving much to the imagination.

Just like every part of the fashion industry, and more broadly the commerce industry, the processes that go towards producing our clothes, both on a microscale and an industrial scale, are changing rapidly.

In this second edition of FashionUnited's Future of Fashion series, we will be looking at the ways clothing manufacturing has changed in recent times, and what types of innovations we can expect to see in the next 10 years.

Sustainable production

As awareness continues to grow around the importance of embracing more sustainable practices in the fashion industry, and as the world nears closer to a point of irreversible damage caused by climate change, more and more companies are investing in clean technologies and eco-measures such as reducing chemicals, waste and carbon emissions in manufacturing, or recycling old materials instead of creating new ones.

Recycling

The fashion industry is a wasteful one. According to a report by the Environmental Audit Committee, 300,000 tonnes of clothing are burned or buried in the UK every year, while a 2017 report from Reverse Resources estimated that as much as one-quarter of the material fashion manufacturers purchase are wasted each year. In 2018, it was revealed that British Luxury brand Burberry destroyed unsold products worth 28.6 million pounds the previous year.

As consumers become increasingly aware of the excessive waste caused by the industry, more fashion companies are investing in extending the life-cycle of fashion garments through recycling and reusing clothing. Recycled fibers can be created either from pre-consumer waste or post-consumer waste. One of the biggest hurdles that arises from the latter is that the process can be complicated, energy intensive and expensive to separate blends - a mix of two or more types of textile material.

The H&M Foundation is one of the bodies trying to help this. They teamed up with research institute HKRITA (The Hong Kong Research Institute of Textiles and Apparel) to explore methods to separate and recycle fiber blends made from the three main types of textile material: synthetics, cellulose and animal fibres. In 2017, the partnership discovered a hydrothermal recycling system that could fully separate and recycle cotton and polyester blends into new fibres and cellulose powder.

Italian company Aquafil is also on the frontline of textile recycling. It uses a regeneration and purification process to turn nylon from waste such as fishing nets, fabric scraps, carpet flooring and industrial plastic from landfills and oceans into Econyl regenerated nylon.

German sportswear giant Adidas has also stepped into the recycling arena, with plans announced to create 11 million pairs of sneakers made from recycled ocean plastic in 2019, and a commitment to only using recycling plastic in their shoes by 2024.

Less water

Brands are also ramping up their efforts to cut down on the excessive use of water, energy and chemicals across the fashion supply chain. Big players in the denim game, where water usage is especially high, have introduced new technologies and made fresh commitments to cut down on water usage. According to author Stephen Leahy's "Your Water Footprint: The Shocking Facts About How Much Water We Use to Make Everyday Products," 7,600 liters of water are used to make a pair of jeans - this includes for growing cotton and manufacturing the garments.

In June, US denim manufacturer Wrangler launched the first denim collection using its new Indigood foam-dyeing technology which is said to eliminate almost 100 percent of the water typically used in the indigo-dyeing process. Similarly, another US denim producer, Levi's, announced in Augusta new water action strategy that will shift from a singular "one-size-fits-all" approach to one focusing more on areas where water is needed the most. The company has set a goal to reduce its cumulative water use for manufacturing by 50 percent in water-stressed areas by 2025.

Fewer chemicals

The fashion industry also creates a lot of chemicals, many of which can seep into water, soil and air. In 2018, the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (BCP) published a list of the most common hazardous chemicals used in the manufacturing of low-cost clothing, mainly from China - they included lead, NFE (nonylphenol ethoxylates and nonylphenols), phthalates and formaldehyde.

But progress is being made. A Greenpeace Germany report released last year, called 'Destination Zero: seven years of Detoxing the clothing industry', found that of 80 international brands that committed to reduce the amount of hazardous chemicals in their clothing production, all achieved "significant progress". The companies represent 15 percent of global clothing production and included fashion, sportswear and luxury retailers, outdoor brands and suppliers. Puma, Adidas and Nike were among the first brands to react to Greenpeace's call to action, signing up to a 'detox commitment'.

While we are extremely happy to see the progress of Detox companies towards cleaning up their supply chains, 85 percent of the textile industry is still not doing enough to eliminate hazardous chemicals and improve factory working conditions. This is unacceptable. It is time for policy-makers to step in and make Detox a worldwide standard.
Kirsten Brodde, Greenpeace Germany project lead of the Detox-my-Fashion campaign

The dyeing stage in the fashion supply chain is particularly guilty of being incredibly water-intensive and chemical-heavy. According to The World Bank Group, between 17-20 percent of all water pollution comes from textile dyeing and treatment.

Portugese textile company Tintex is pioneering the movemenet towards reducing the amount of toxic chemicals used in the textile production process, through a variety of innovative technologies and commitments. It's Picasso project, for example, replaces synthetic dyes with natural extracts from plants and mushrooms, among other things.

"I think in the future natural dyeing will be a big thing. We know as a company how difficult it is to develop these processes, but we also realise how in-demand it is and how many brands are interested in it," said Ana Silva, head of sustainability at Tintex. "I also think that in the future there will be a lot more of a connection between different industries, where one industry will offer their residue or waste to another industry where they can be given another life. The future is really about changing from a linear model into a circular one."

Less carbon

Cutting down on carbon emissions seems to be one of the biggest goals of the fashion industry at the moment, with a raft of fashion companies this year pledging to reduce their carbon footprints.

In September, French luxury conglomerate Kering announced its ambitious plan to make its entire group go carbon neutral within its own operations and across the entire supply chain. In the same month, Jeff Bezos, CEO of US retail giant Amazon, announced plans for the company to become net zero carbon across its businesses by 2040, ten years ahead of the Paris Accord's goal of 2050. The strategy involves a 100 million dollar reforestation scheme and the purchase of 100,000 more electric delivery vans. The announcement came after the retailer faced backlash for its enormous carbon footprint. The day before Bezos' announcement, over 1,500 Amazon workers staged a walk-out to take part in the Global Climate Strike.

Other fashion brands making similar commitments in the past few months:

But progress might not be coming fast enough. According to the FTSE 100 Sustainability leaderboard and report, more than 85 percent of the UK's top 100 companies do not have sufficient carbon reduction strategies. The report, by carbon strategy consulting firm EcoAct, found that while 81 percent of the companies have some sort of emissions reduction target, 85 percent of them do not have a sufficient emissions reduction strategy in place to limit global warming to safe levels.

The sharing economy as a new sustainable business model

While finding ways to produce fashion with a less harmful impact on the environment is certainly a step in the right direction, reducing the amount of clothing made in general is still the best option for the environment. Fortunately for the fashion industry then, the resale market is on the rise, so much so, in fact, that according to a report by resale platform ThredUp, it has grown 21 times faster than first hand fashion retail over the past three years and is expected to grow from 24 billion US dollars to 51 billion US dollars in the next five years.

According to Max Bittner, CEO of French resale platform Vestiaire Collective, the resale market offers an exciting, engaging and sustainable alternative to the fast-fashion model. "I think consumer preferences on participating in a more sustainable consumption model is something that the younger generation is much more aware of. They know there is a real need to do something and to act," he said.

Exclusive Sample Sales has a similar mission. Launched by Lauren Rogers and Rachel Amis in 2016, the company offers a service for fashion retailers to sell their excess inventory via a sample sale. Amis and Rogers founded the company after feeling disillusionment at the wasteful destruction of unsold stock by luxury brands. The company aims to helping to increase product life cycle, offer new customers an off-price route to luxury brands and helps those brands protect their bottom line.

Rogers commented: "From my experience within the luxury fashion sector, I could see the challenge faced by retailers of how to clear their excess stock. I also became conscious of the fashion industry's need to operate more sustainably and improve product lifecycle. This is really what inspired the Exclusive Sample Sale model. We saw an opportunity to help both businesses and the environment simultaneously and make a real difference".

Other new fashion models which increase the life-cycle of garments include rental services such as Rent The Runway, which was valued at a billion dollars in May 2019. The popularity of the business model has taken off as consumers' interest in the 'sharing-economy' increases - this year alone, Banana Republic, Urban Outfitters, Scotch and Soda and Ann Taylor Loft have announced subscritption rental services.

Innovative and experimental materials and textiles

Toggle the sections below to discover more about innovative new textiles and materials being experimented with and used in the fashion industry:

Automation and fashion on-demand

Leaps and bounds in the development of automation and machine learning have made fashion-on-demand a reality. Though still in its infancy, the business model is an alternative to the mass production of clothing that we know today, offering a faster, and more sustainable model with small-batch production cycles and reduced levels of overstock. It is a shift from making clothes then selling them, to selling clothes then making them. Production costs are generally higher, however, due to the smaller batch sizes used.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Amazon has been quick to try its hand at the new tech. In 2017, the US retailer had a patent application approved for an on-demand apparel manufacturing warehouse. In the future it's likely that fashion brands will offer on-demand production similar to this, where a user can have bespoke clothing measured exactly for them, created with a few clicks on a computer or smartphone.

"Once various textile products are printed, cut and assembled according to the orders, they can be processed through a quality check, photographed for placement in an electronic commerce system, shipped to customers and/or stored in a materials handling facility for order fulfillment," Amazon's patent reads. "By aggregating orders from various geographic locations and coordinating apparel assembly processes on a large scale, the embodiments provide new ways to increase efficiency in apparel manufacturing."

Fashion on demand also offers shoppers more say in their fashion choices as consumers' interest in personalisation continues to grow. Rather than relying on brands to predict what they want to wear - which can often go wrong and result in overstock - shoppers will be able to choose what they want, and customise the designs accordingly.

Companies like French tech business Lectra are at the frontline of this movement. This year, it launched a solution that automates the entire personalisation process, from product development to final cutting.

This fashion-on demand trend sees brands beginning to streamline their supply chains by internalising production. In April 2018, for example, Gucci launched Gucci Art Lab, a 37,000-square-metre hub of industrial craftsmanship and experimental laboratory for leather goods and footwear products. The lab has space for prototyping and sampling of leather goods and footwear, R&D laboratories for new materials, metal hardware and packaging, a test lab, an accessories lab as well as a pre-industrialization area, all under one roof, giving the brand more control over its product development.

Similarly, Adidas launched the 'Knit for You' in Berlin in 2017. The pop-up used a 3D body scanner to measure shoppers' measurements. They could then choose personalised designs before the machine would knit them a custom merino wool sweater. The whole process was Adidas' way of experimenting with localised production and took around four hours.

Meanwhile, at Tommy Hilfiger's denim lab in Amsterdam, traditional hand-scraping dry techniques for adding wear and tear to denim have been switched out for new automated laser technology methods. Using a computer-controlled laser to burn a mask onto jeans, reducing the time of the process from 40 minutes to under two minutes. The method additionally eliminates the use of chemicals, water and stones, and only burns the indigo dye, not the fibres, so it cuts down on harmful dust production.

Nike is also experimenting with 3D printing. The sportswear giant teamed up with Silicon Valley-based startup Grabit for an auto-layering robot that uses electroadhesion to manufacture shoe uppers in just 50 seconds, 20 times faster than it takes a human. The robot's ROI is less than two year, according to Grabit.

As well as 3D printing and knitting offering more agile and efficient production models, they are also particularly exciting for the fashion industry as they add a new level of design opportunities, allowing for complex shapes and designs to be created that without the technology would be considerably more difficult, if not impossible.

American fashion designer Zac Posen showcased just that at the 2019 Met Gala, where he teamed up with US 3D printing company Protolabs to create dresses for the likes of Katie Holmes, Jourdan Dunn, Nina Dobrev, Gia Coppola and Deepika Padukone. Posen designed the dresses inspired by a vision of freezing objects in motion, resulting in a powerful and surreal designs.

His rose gown dress worn by British model Jourdan Dunn was made of 21 unique petals weighing a pound each. The petals, which took approximately 100 hours each to print, were made of Accura Xtreme White 200 durable plastic and printed on a stereolithography (SLA) machine.

Hover over the image to discover more about the Rose gown.
Picture: courtesy of Zac Posen x GE Additive x Protolabs Met Gala catwalk by Getty

Better working conditions

Often the elephant in the room when it comes to fashion - especially when it comes to fast-fashion - transparency surrounding worker conditions within the industry are becoming increasingly important, and more companies are bringing in new regulations to monitor standards.

In recent years, more and more global fashion brands have been pledging to work with suppliers, governments and NGOs to make sure workers earn a fair living wage and work in better conditions. But there is still a long way to go.

In July, a study of 20 leading fashion brands conducted by the Clean Clothing Campaign found that none of the companies are currently ring-fencing a living wage figure into their product costs. Although some companies, like H&M, say its buyers have been trained to take a labor cost out of its price negotiation, there is no independent data to confirm this -- and the so-called labor costs are not a living wage benchmark figure.

That said, C&A, Nike and H&M were all able to show reductions in their supplier numbers in the last 5 years, achieving 39 percent, 33 percent and 14 percent, respectively. Adidas and H&M also have a policy limiting the use of repeated short term contracts with suppliers, with Nike going so far as to establish a 15 percent cap on them.

Similarly, a study published earlier this year by Know The Chain found that major clothing and footwear brands are failing to tackle the exploitation of vulnerable workers in their supply chains. The benchmark test - which measured 43 global companies' efforts to address forced labour - gave the apparel and footwear sector an overall average score of 37 out of 100.

Adidas (92/100) came top of the list with the best average score, followed closely by Lululemon (89/100) and Gap Inc. (75/100). At the other end of the scale, luxury brands Prada (5/100), Salvatore Ferragamo (13/100), and LVMH (14/100), and footwear brands Skechers (7/100) and Foot Locker (12/100) all fared poorly.

The results were disappointing but they did in their bleak findings prove a growing trend - more light is being shined on poor work conditions, and at an increasing rate, just perhaps not quickly enough.

In May, leading fashion companies including Nike, PVH, Levi Strauss, Esprit, Adidas and Under Armour signed an open letter to the Cambodian government urging it to improve its labour standards. Recently, both the European Union and the United States have had to re-examine the country as a trading partner "based on the declining respect for labour standards, including freedom of association, and other issues related to respect for human rights issues in Cambodia.
Media credit: Unspun, Pexel

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Future of Fashion: Production - sustainable, high-tech and on-demand

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LONGFORM The process of producing clothing in the fashion industry is for the most part hidden away from the public eye. While it is easy to see the leaps and bounds that are taking place every day in the retail industry for example, which

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Increasingly, multinational corporations (MNCs) are pledging to procure the materials and services they need from companies committed to fair labor practices and environmental protections. But the reality is that their suppliers-especially those at low levels of the chain-often violate sustainability standards, exposing MNCs to serious financial and social risks.

To explore this problem-and identify solutions-the authors studied the supply networks of three MNCs deemed to be sustainability leaders. These companies engage in behaviors that are worth emulating; for example, they have established long-term sustainability goals, and they try to cascade good practices all the way down to lower-tier suppliers, using a combination of direct, indirect, industrywide, and global strategies. But all MNCs have more work to do to develop sustainable supply networks. They must emphasize social and environmental responsibility, along with economic considerations, at every level of the supply chain. They must give their procurement officers better training and incentives to pursue supplier sustainability. And to encourage widespread dissemination of best practices, they need more direct contact with the procurement people at their first-tier suppliers.

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Increasingly, multinational corporations (MNCs) are pledging to procure the materials and services they need from companies committed to fair labor practices and environmental protections. But the reality is that their suppliers-especially those at low levels of the chain-often violate sustainability standards, exposing MNCs to serious financial and social risks.

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Breeding and growing organic naturally colored cottons since 1982

The first cotton to be organically bred and grown in the USA. Opening minds to the possibilities of textiles that can enliven the soil while growing and comfort our eyes and skin while wearing, no chemicals required.

Due to Covid orders may take as long as 9- 14 days to ship. Thank you for your patience in advance.

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Breeding and growing organic naturally colored cottons since 1982 The first cotton to be organically bred and grown in the USA. Opening minds to the possibilities of textiles that can enliven the soil while growing and comfort our eyes and skin while wearing, no chemicals required.

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Worker-Led Co-Ops Are The Future

Hoda Katebi is fed up with sweatshops, and she's doing something about it. I know, it's a pretty bold statement. Especially seeing how the garment industry has been running on the exploitation of underprivileged workers for hundreds of years, but all big changes happen with a single first step. And hers is the launch of the Blue Tin Production Co-Op in Chicago, the U.S.'s first clothing cooperative run by refugee and immigrant women. It will officially open its doors this month.

"By ensuring that the garment workers are the ones that run, own, and profit off of their manufacturing co-op, there is less chance of abuse, exploitation, and the temptation to cut corners, creating dangerous working conditions."

The creation of a worker-led co-op can disrupt the manufacturing industry because it will give designers truly transparent options when it comes to creating their collections. By ensuring that the garment workers are the ones that run, own, and profit off of their manufacturing co-op, there is less chance of abuse, exploitation, and the temptation to cut corners, creating dangerous working conditions. The fashion industry is worth an estimated 2.4 trillion dollars, and is filled with labor rights abuses. If more co-ops like this open, designers will be faced with two options: hiring production factories that are cheap in cost but with histories of abuse, or hiring the women-led co-ops that are guaranteed not to be sweatshops. Ethical fashion would be easier to produce and easier to shop.

Katebi is the Iranian-American founder of fashion and social action publication JooJoo Azad, and she's made a career out of challenging fast fashion and fighting for garment workers' rights. The co-op project began to take root when Katebi wanted to start her own socially-conscious clothing line, but then realized how difficult it was to find ethical manufacturing. Even the factories in Los Angeles are routinely shut down as sweatshops for exploiting undocumented Mexican workers. This brought Katebi to the realization that the only way to challenge the system was to put it directly into the hands of the workers.

"The only way to challenge the system is to put it directly into the hands of the workers."

That's where the Blue Tin Production Co-op comes in. Named after the blue Danish cookie tin that immigrant mothers use as sewing supply storage, the Co-op's first launch is based in Chicago. It hires highly-skilled, low-income immigrant and refugee women and gives them non-patronizing, dignified work.

The women work full-time to produce clothes for designers, brands, and even department stores. Not only does Blue Tin employ these women, but it also provides mental and physical healthcare, legal and social services, child care, transportation, know your rights training, and even language services.

"A co-op is so necessary," Katebi tells The Good Trade. "The garment industry has historically been plagued with violence and exploitation, and I wanted to create a space with a model that could as much as possible prevent even the possibility of repeating this violent history. Through a co-op structure, the members are all managers, and we all work together to determine every aspect of the co-op: from how the studio/workspace looks to the hours we work to the services we provide to ourselves and the community."

All the members of the co-op carry intense trauma from their history, from losing spouses and children in war, to surviving domestic abuse, to being separated from their families. Throwing these women into underpaid jobs soon after landing in a new country gives them no time to process or deal with their pain. The co-op aims to fill all the needs of its members, not just the financial ones. Giving women the opportunity to run and manage themselves as a group gives them the chance to heal and and look forward.

"Giving women the opportunity to run and manage themselves as a group gives them the chance to heal and and look forward."

And it works. Mercy, a founding co-op member, shared how the community has helped her rebuild. "I'm coming from an abusive relationship...and when you go through that, it brings you down. It makes you think you can not be nothing...telling you that you can never amount to anything. Coming to this co-operative, seeing these beautiful women, it gives you a sense of strength...it's a blessing."

In addition to revolutionizing working conditions and opportunities, Blue Tin Production also provides free certification-based sewing classes to the greater community of refugees, immigrants, and people of color looking to build their sewing skills, giving them the option to eventually join the Co-op or find a well paying, competing job elsewhere.

So what does this mean for ethical fashion as a whole?

Katebi is taking the guesswork and struggle out of the equation for designers who want to create clothes without exploiting people. And people are taking notice: the Co-op has already signed a list of designers and a soon-to-be announced department store, which will be creating an in-house line with the organization.

"We hope to, by working with large department stores, push for a greater shift in production that is transparent, ethical, and holistic. But more than that, we also want to be able to support independent designers who have such a difficult time finding manufacturing companies to work with when they have small minimums and slow production cycles. We want to be able to support and uplift slow fashion," Katebi says.

"More broadly, we want to be able to set the bar in what clothing production can and should look like-but also, industry in general. Owned, run by, and managed by those doing the actual work on the ground, and especially those with the most needs."

The Co-op is also working to educate us, the shoppers. It's hard not to be swept away with the micro-collections and cheap price tags that fast fashion store windows tempt consumers with, but knowing what it takes to create these pieces can change minds. Because of that, the Co-op opens its doors to the public in order to raise the curtain behind the production.

"We want to be able to set the bar in what clothing production can and should look like-but also, industry in general."

- Hoda Katebi

"It is so important for people to understand exactly what goes into creating a simple shirt, and why it shouldn't cost five dollars," Katebi explains.

For studio visits, Katebi likes to go through the process and lifespan of a shirt, from growing and harvesting the raw materials that make it all the way to its display in a store window. "Understanding the countless components, resources, and time that goes into creating something we take for granted-and we all indulge in-is shocking. I also bring in stories from my research and interviews with garment workers to personalize and go beyond just numbers and stats. The room gets terrifyingly quiet," Katebi says. "As designers and consumers, we shouldn't allow ourselves to justify or normalize violence in producing clothing."

"As designers and consumers, we shouldn't allow ourselves to justify or normalize violence in producing clothing."

- Hoda Katebi

The Blue Tin Production Co-Op takes out the excuse of "I didn't know" when it comes to the production system. Rather than going with low-cost factories that add to the bottom dollar, designers will have a truly transparent option that guarantees production workers are not only paid a living wage, but are thriving in their positions. These worker-led and owned co-ops will give designers and labels an easy alternative to the hazy ethics behind production factories. It takes the hurtle out of creating socially-conscious clothing, and ensures creators that the rights of workers are respected throughout their supply chain. The Blue Tin Production Co-op is a step in the right direction to begin dismantling that system.
You can help support the Blue Tin Production Co-Op and challenge sweatshops by donating to its crowdfund and following along on its !

Marlen Komar is a fashion journalist who writes about how fashion and beauty can be a tool to implement change, push politics, and change public opinion. She is based in Chicago and has a thing for kimchi tacos.

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How Employee-Owned Fashion Co-Ops Are Challenging Sweatshop Production

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Hoda Katebi is fed up with sweatshops, and she's doing something about it. I know, it's a pretty bold statement. Especially seeing how the garment industry has been running on the exploitation of underprivileged workers for hundreds of years, but all big changes happen with a single first step.

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Being creative in today's world is exciting. The world really is our oyster. Not only that - but for those of us more conscious about life in general and life on our planet - there is no better time to create, profit and instigate change for the better.

But how can creating and profiting ever be good for the planet?

I know.... It's almost like the two concepts are mutually exclusive.

Or are they?

Have we been conditioned to think in black and white and the magic really is outside of the lines we have been thought to colour within?

As a creative who grew up not allowed to think of creativity as a profession, I count myself lucky to do what I do today. I grew up in a country where travelling outside of our own city even was an ordeal. A lot has changed since then. My thirst for travel has taken me to far-flung corners of the world. My curiosity and work in fashion have made me criss-cross the world to find factories for all kind of products. In the process, I have come to know the ins and outs of societies and cultures as far removed from my own as possible. And in the process, I realised that it is possible to have a global outlook and create a local impact.
Congratulations, you're global
I firmly believe that if you are a creative, who wants to create a business that's profitable and meaningful - not a hobby - but really - a business that pays the bills, fancy holidays and your kids' education, you can have it all. And you can also help impact the world positively in the process.

The minute we launch our websites and open our virtual web stores - we are global.

Available to anyone in any corner of the world that has access to the internet.

We are so global these days that having brick and mortar shop - the dream of dreams for the generations before us - is no longer appealing, let alone profitable.

Through the online ability to advertise and reach the unreachable of yesteryear - a fashion or creative brand is no longer just a brand. A brand in today's world is also a media agency. Creating content, advertising and marketing is a core activity that takes up more time than the actual, vital activity of product creation.

And yet.... Some things never change.

No matter how fast the world spins and changes - a product-based business relies on its product. The quality of the make, the design signature of the brand, the materials used to translate the idea into a finished product are the vital ingredients. Choosing wisely, executing masterfully is what brings in the rewards.
Old metrics vs New metrics
In yesterdays' world - the rewards were often measured in monetary terms - sales, profit, margin, turnover....

But in today's consciously elevated world and collective mindfulness - success is found in the intersection of profit and purpose.

Success is when - what you create and how you make it happen, leaves the world a better place.

One way of creating impact is to be sustainable and ethical. Two camouflage terms I'm no fan of because of the myriad of empty words and misunderstandings that hide behind them.

"Sustainable" meaning that you don't deplete the planet's resources and create more waste. That you don't harm the environment by generating directly or indirectly pollution, toxic gases and un-processable waist. Given that the fashion industry is currently the second-largest polluter - there's a long way to go and much to be done. Though every little will help and everyone should try to do their fair share - the real impact will happen when the large players join the small brad -warriors and together meaningful effort is made towards a clear united goal.
"Ethical" on the other relates to how you treat the people you work with. The people who work for you directly and indirectly.
The best way to create a lasting change and be sustainable and ethical is to invest in your people and location.

Here is where many get confused in my opinion. To most people local means where they live and work. But what if there was another "local"?
The new "local" that's far away
Not your office or home location - but the location where the most impactful and important "assets" of your business are created. Usually, this is where your manufacturing takes place. Or where the most of your raw materials originate from.

To manufacturing fashion locally to where you work and live is not always possible. Sourcing everything locally to where you manufacture is also often impossible. We have to be realistic and accept that resources are scattered at different locations, all over the world and a certain amount of movement of goods will take place no matter how hard we try to avoid it. No matter what you do -there will be some carbon footprint trail left behind you.

But that can be offset by the bigger value and impact any business can create by investing in the local community where their manufacturing or main material sourcing originates.

Most larger Western fashion brands often manufacture out of poorer Asian countries. That is a choice made for commercial reasons. The work they consistently give to their factory is responsible directly for many people being employed and indirectly for many families having some income. There is an opportunity for many more local manufacturing benefits.
How to be a better local
If a concerted effort was made to centralise as much as possible the sourcing locally, as well as, or in a closer radius to the place of manufacture - even more people will be employed, and the carbon footprint will be kept low. The local manufacturing benefits are numerous.

If the workers are paid fairly and additional benefit schemes created and invested in - the local community will thrive. The cost to the western designer - minimal. The impact and local manufacturing benefits created - maximum.

An Indian factory I worked with in the past, employing mostly men, who often were the main breadwinner of their large families, is one such example. Once per year, they organise a family day for their workers where food and music were provided for everyone to enjoy. More importantly, on that same day - a group of doctors were brought to the premises that gave a free health check to the workers and their family members.

A Turkish factory I also worked with some time back, that worked with big brands and was able to defend well their prices and safeguard their own margins, built new factory premises that included prayer room and breast-feeding room for mothers, who came back to work but had small babies at home. A family member will bring the babies to be fed, especially on the days when workers had to stay late to complete urgent orders.

These examples are of businesses taking care of their localities and helping create support and improvements.

Though there aren't many examples of western designers making an impact locally, I recently did come across one. Natalie Simond - the founder of sustainable and ethical jewellery brand Amadeus Bijoux.

She has invested financially into the Brazilian mine from which she sources her gemstones and the Philippines pearl farm supplier. This has allowed her suppliers to in turn invest in their businesses and make them more sustainable and ethical, as well as invest in their local communities and create a wave of social change and improvements.

This kind of forward-thinking is rare in fashion, especially for small brands. It requires brave new thinking, long term vision and passion beyond the product and business KPIs.

Such initiatives can become more mainstream if we - the western designers- take interest in the betterment of the local community on which our businesses depend on.

There is so much that can be done, if only we stop and take a little time to get to know the people who create our products and the life they live. With so little from our side, we can impact our new "local" in a way we can never accomplish in our own real locality.
So - can you be global and local at the same time?
Sure! You just need to reframe what local means and open up your mind to the bigger picture of life on our planet.

Doing good has no boundaries.

Contributing positively has no borders and demarcations.

Every little helps and in turn creates a compound effect over time, much greater than we can imagine today.

So, what is your "local"? How can you invest in it, all the while playing a global game?

The doors to our signature programme "Fashion Manufactury Mastery" are now OPEN. If you want to join and learn more about manufacturing - how to find, select and work with the right manufacturers and launch and grow your brand as a result -

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How to manufacture fashion locally but grow a brand globally

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Being creative in today's world is exciting. The world really is our oyster. Not only that - but for those of us more conscious about life in general and life on our planet - there is no better time to create, profit and instigate change for the better.