Fashion reached several sustainability milestones this year, but there\u2019s growing pressure for the industry to make real progress, not just announce its intentions to do so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
BY <\/strong>RACHEL CERNANSKY<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n December 15, 2022<\/p>\n\n\n\n 2022 was full of milestones for an industry working on sustainability. More brands have set climate targets than ever, alternative materials are on the rise, and resale has gone mainstream.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What\u2019s still missing? Major progress resulting from those efforts. The industry transformation that experts say is necessary \u2014 towards fashion companies reducing their total emissions and not just making products more efficiently; where brands source all of their materials in ways that respect both people and planet; and more clothes get recycled into new clothes than end up as waste overseas \u2014 is nowhere in sight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe are still stuck in the pilot phase,\u201d says Bel Jacobs, former fashion editor and co-founder of the Islington Climate Centre. \u201cThe major players still believe that voluntary agreements and the tweaking of fabrications will be enough to address the crisis, despite all evidence to the contrary. Fashion needs to engage in a huge structural shift before it comes even close to appropriate action.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n With brands taking steps from investing in renewable energy, to launching products made with next-gen materials, to committing to reduce plastic waste, the last year has been a busy one for sustainability in fashion. However, intent does not necessarily equate to success or effectiveness. Experts say fashion\u2019s efforts do not add up to the scale or pace of change that is so clearly needed. While the industry is launching initiatives and running pilot projects here and there \u2014 even though some are legitimately promising \u2014 it is, at the same time, carrying on with business as usual in the rest of its operations. The latter undermines the former, in the minds of climate scientists, environmental advocates, small brands and emerging designers focused on sustainability, and others pushing the industry to do better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cFashion only wants us to see its potential, not its core. They are showing us only what they will evolve into, trying their level best to keep hiding the reality of what they are,\u201d says Orsola de Castro, co-founder of Fashion Revolution and author of Loved Clothes Last<\/em>. \u201cWhy? Because change is uncomfortable.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Whitney McGuire, attorney and co-founder of community consultancy Sustainable Brooklyn, is more blunt. \u201cI was a little dismayed [this year] by the emergence of cause-related marketing, and companies throwing money at the problem without addressing the root,\u201d she says. The industry\u2019s reliance on voluntary efforts is not only ineffective, she adds, it also risks undermining potential for real change. \u201cYou can\u2019t have a self-regulated industry in the time of the apocalypse.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Innovative materials gained a real foothold in the industry this year. Ganni and Stella McCartney released products made with Mylo, a mycelium leather alternative; while Herm\u00e8s-backed Mycoworks said it is ready to scale production of its material Reishi. Agricultural waste has turned up in products from Ganni (using Pyratex, which is also the startup behind Mara Hoffman\u2019s polyester- and nylon-free swimwear launch<\/a>), Zara and others; and Neiman Marcus said it\u2019s looking to apple leather<\/a> as it phases out fur. And startups including Renewcell, Infinited Fiber Company and Natural Fiber Welding that recycle existing textiles into new ones \u2014 a necessity for a circular economy \u2014 picked up momentum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yet, next-gen materials can only help fashion to reduce its impacts if they are used to replace conventional materials \u2014 and, as of now, material innovation has added to fashion\u2019s repertoire but not fundamentally changed it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOver the past year we have found that many executives, designers, and decision-makers believe the pathway to sustainability is through alternative materials. I\u2019m thrilled there is an emphasis on new origins and we\u2019re rethinking what products are made from \u2014 this is a must,\u201d says Beth Esponnette, former designer and co-founder of custom denim startup Unspun. \u201cBut, I think we are missing the bigger picture that the current fashion and supply chain system is set up incorrectly. We need to rewrite methods for selling, manufacturing and recirculating the products we create.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Meanwhile, fashion has shown no sign of abating its use of virgin materials. In reports published this year, Textile Exchange found the industry is slow to adopt more sustainable materials<\/a> \u2014 and not focused on what\u2019s really needed<\/a>, which is less production overall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Synthetic materials are a particular threat because of their reliance on fossil fuels, say critics, and fashion is not only still using them \u2014 some companies are using them more. Of 55 global brands and retailers analysed by nonprofit Changing Markets, 25 per cent \u2014 14 of the companies \u2014 have increased their use of synthetics, both in terms of the percentage of total fibre mix and total volume over this period, according to a report<\/a> published this week. \u201cThus, amid an accelerating climate emergency, with many other industries scrambling to decarbonise, one quarter of the fashion sector\u2019s largest companies are recording a heavier reliance on fossil-fuel-derived fabrics,\u201d the authors write.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Only one brand, Reformation, landed in its Frontrunners category, for its commitment to reducing all synthetics, both virgin and recycled, to less than 1 per cent of total sourcing by 2025 and phasing out virgin synthetics entirely by 2030. (A number of smaller brands, such as Mara Hoffman and Eileen Fisher, have similar commitments or have already eliminated synthetics in most of their product lines, but they were not ranked by or mentioned in the report.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n While material choices are important, they are not likely to matter much if the industry does not address overproduction and transition away from fossil fuels for powering its supply chain \u2014 where the overwhelming majority of the industry\u2019s carbon footprint actually comes from.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Brands are proud when they are able to produce individual garments more efficiently, but that\u2019s irrelevant as a climate solution when total volumes continue to increase. \u201cMany [lifecycle assessments] and impact metrics are based on the unit (in our industry, this unit is a garment), and forgo evaluating the full system,\u201d says Esponnette. \u201cIf we only evaluate the unit, we ignore overproduction \u2014 which is a mistake.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n And most of the industry\u2019s manufacturing is done in countries \u2014 China, Bangladesh and India among others \u2014 where the grid is powered almost entirely by coal and other fossil fuels. Promises of decarbonisation and transitioning to alternative energy sources are increasingly common in the industry, but have yet to materialise at scale in the countries where it matters most.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Veronica Bates Kassatly, an independent analyst and former World Bank economist, says that even if a brand cuts its raw materials footprint in half, that will only have a 5 per cent impact on the lifetime total of greenhouse gas emissions \u2014 hardly the drastic emissions cuts the planet needs and that brands have promised. \u201cTo tell us that that\u2019s what we need to look at is quite simply wrong. It\u2019s not substantiated by the data. The big ticket item is the manufacturing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n For the most part, the clean energy transition is not something that requires technological innovation or futuristic ideas \u2014 much of it is almost exclusively dependent on funding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOften, it is not that technologies cannot be scaled, so much as they are not being scaled,\u201d says Lewis Perkins, president of the Apparel Impact Institute (AII). Advocates were encouraged to see his organisation launch the Fashion Climate Fund<\/a> in June, which is a collaborative effort to reduce the funding gap<\/a> and accelerate the industry\u2019s work on decarbonisation \u2014 and one of the first indications that the industry is prepared to spend money on an initiative that isn\u2019t as marketable as, say, a recycled-cotton T-shirt. Brands such as Reformation and Rothy\u2019s say the approach is helpful because it\u2019s working at a scale, and with a degree of expertise and technicality, that individual brands can\u2019t achieve and don\u2019t possess.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Circularity might hold the crown as 2022\u2019s biggest buzzword, with a lot of the conversation centred on resale \u2014 even Zara and Shein are now in the game \u2014 but while it\u2019s touted as a sustainability move, there\u2019s little indication it\u2019s being deployed for that purpose. Reports from both Thredup and The RealReal<\/a> found that customers are increasingly treating resale like fast fashion \u2014 craving constant newness and buying more than they need \u2014 while brands are adding it to existing business models, not looking for it to replace sales of new products. Another Tomorrow, with its own resale launch in May, is a rare exception<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI\u2019ve seen a lot of companies this year say: \u2018We want a circular business model\u2019 \u2014 but they don\u2019t want to do the full value chain of circularity. There\u2019s no plan for taking it back, no plan for repair, for reuse,\u201d says Phillips.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While brands are, in fact, dabbling increasingly in repair services<\/a> as well as rental, they show little intent, as with resale, for those offerings to displace the need for new production and, more importantly, they offer it in a very limited capacity. What is still sorely lacking is a plan for when products are not easily repaired \u2014 a true end-of-life strategy. Brands and repair companies repair the products that can recoup enough value to justify the time and expense involved in the repair itself. For products that are too damaged to be repaired in a cost-effective manner, and for lower-value products regardless of the extent of the damage, landfill is still their most likely destination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That is far from what a circular economy would require<\/a>, and that\u2019s not an accident, says Nicole Bassett, co-founder of The Renewal Workshop, which restores or reworks unsellable apparel to make new products and was acquired by logistics company Bleckmann this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBrands, when push comes to shove, are doing everything in their power to protect their existing linear business models. I see how quickly brands rushed to protect their own assets when Covid hit, and then continued business as usual when the supply chains struggled,\u201d she says. \u201cIn my opinion, brands don\u2019t have the skills to do anything different than they do now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The growth in take-back programmes, similarly, has raised concerns that brands are more concerned about the appearance of reducing waste \u2014 and in the process, shifting it elsewhere \u2014 but not actually eliminating it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Meanwhile, the industry as a whole remains focused on newness and star appeal \u2014 with no better example than fashion\u2019s runaway moment of the year, the Coperni spray-on dress, which came with its own implications<\/a> for the environment. With a few notable exceptions, such as Chlo\u00e9<\/a>, the industry appears largely ignorant of its potential to influence culture and shape society with sustainability as a priority.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the long run, measuring progress is complicated. There\u2019s little doubt the industry scored some wins this year. The question is more about how, or whether, it will leverage those wins moving forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt\u2019s hard for me to view progress linearly. Sometimes, taking steps back can also propel us forward in other areas,\u201d says Sustainable Brooklyn\u2019s McGuire.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The industry transformation that experts say is necessary \u2014\u00a0towards fashion companies reducing their total emissions and not just making products more efficiently; where brands source all of their materials in ways that respect both people and planet; and more clothes get recycled into new clothes than end up as waste overseas \u2014 is nowhere in sight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27000,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":true,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"%%post_title%% %%sep%% %%sitetitle%%","_seopress_titles_desc":"%%post_excerpt%%","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[47,1],"tags":[],"media-types":[51],"class_list":["post-26314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-industry-category","category-uncategorized","media-types-article"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/apparelimpact.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/apparelimpact.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/apparelimpact.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apparelimpact.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apparelimpact.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26314"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/apparelimpact.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26314\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apparelimpact.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/apparelimpact.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apparelimpact.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apparelimpact.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26314"},{"taxonomy":"media-types","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apparelimpact.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media-types?post=26314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}The prospects and limitations of material innovation<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Emissions still climbing<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis is deeply unsexy stuff that is deeply important for summarily changing the effects of our supply chain on the planet,\u201d says Carrie Ellen Phillips, co-founding partner of communications firm BPCM. \u201cThose emissions are the number one thing we have to deal with.\u201d<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Growth of \u201ccircular services\u201d \u2014 but not circularity<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n