In 2019, Gucci announced that it had become “entirely carbon neutral”. It seemed an impressive feat for a luxury brand whose supply chain and consumer base stretches across the globe, but fast forward to 2023, and the luxury brand dropped the claim—not because it had abandoned its sustainability commitments, but because what constitutes carbon neutral was in contention.

Like Gucci, many fashion brands—including Saint Laurent, Balenciaga, Reformation, and Allbirds, to name a few—have used carbon offsets to claim carbon neutrality, or “net zero” status. In fact, nearly half of the world’s public companies plan to use offsets to reach net zero.

But now, regulatory scrutiny around sustainability language in marketing is tightening, requiring brands to be more precise about the claims they make—and be able to back them up.

And a slew of investigations in the past two years has called the integrity of offsets into question, not only criticising their efficacy but also positing that they could, in fact, be causing harm. In the UK, the Advertising Standards Authority is set to ban the use of carbon neutrality claims unless brands can prove them—but as it turns out, proving a claim based on offsets might not even be possible.

Many experts are now concerned not only that carbon offsets are flawed, but that they’re distracting brands from the harder work of decarbonisation. And newly revealed data from Good On You’s ratings of the largest fashion brands paints a concerning picture: overall, brands purchasing offsets aren’t making much progress on actual emissions reduction activities.

What are carbon offsets? They sound good in theory

The focus on carbon neutrality and offsetting is due to a looming deadline set by the 2015 Paris Agreement, which was designed to stop global temperatures rising. The legally-binding agreement stated that emissions must be reduced by 45% by 2030 and then reach net zero by 2050. In other words, the world needs to remove the same amount of greenhouse gases (GHG) from the atmosphere as it emits so the overall balance is zero.

Carbon offsets seem like a convenient way to do that, at least in theory: if a tonne of carbon is emitted into the atmosphere somewhere in the world, purchasing offsets for a tonne of carbon would mean that it’s being absorbed, in equal measure, somewhere else. In effect, offsets promise to help polluters cancel out emissions.

The most commonly sold offsets are nature-based—because trees, plants, soil, and even the ocean naturally absorb carbon from the atmosphere. In this case, a fashion brand might calculate how much carbon it is going to emit per product or per year, for instance, and then it may choose to “offset” those emissions by buying carbon credits. The money from those carbon credits funds projects that plant trees, restore coastal habitats like mangroves and saltmarshes, conserve rainforests, and so on, to support nature’s ability to absorb and store carbon. Generally, you might see forestry offsets promoted by fashion brands such as popular “you buy X, we plant trees” programs.

There is little to no scientific evidence that any sort of carbon offset can reduce emissions at scale. I compare it to a mass delusion

Roshan Krishnan – policy associate at the Michigan Environmental Justice Coalition

There’s only one problem: there’s a growing consensus among both academics studying carbon markets and environmental justice activists that all too often, this system doesn’t result in real emissions reductions. “There’s been a lot of work to launder the image of the carbon market to make it [seen as] a reputable tool. There is [little to no] scientific evidence that any sort of carbon offset can reduce emissions at scale. I compare it to a mass delusion,” argues Roshan Krishnan, policy associate at the Michigan Environmental Justice Coalition.

The “delusion” stems from the fact that investigations find many of these nature-based offsets sold have been worthless, with independent reporting ultimately concluding they’re often a cash-grab “hustle,” as noted in a recent New Yorker magazine feature about how a leading offset firm, South Pole, sold millions of offset credits for “reductions that weren’t real”.

Beyond nature-based offsets, other kinds of carbon offsets fund actions to reduce carbon emissions in different ways, such as backing renewable energy projects or providing energy-efficient cookstoves to communities that traditionally burn wood for fuel. Again, they vary in rigour and reputation. But as a result of carbon offsets becoming “one of the bigger grifts” in the “bubble-hype market,” offsets have overall lost a lot of public trust, as an editorial in the Financial Times recently concluded.

Mangrove forests like this one are frequently used in carbon offsetting schemes

Newly revealed data on large brands that buy offsets

The Paris Agreement was intended for the world to reduce emissions as much as possible as the first priority. And that’s similarly what we should expect to see from fashion brands. But the problem is, some fashion brands seem to have skipped over the reductions part and ploughed head first into offsetting.

In other words, if brands that purchased offsets were really taking their carbon impacts seriously, then we’d expect them to disclose a lot more information about the actions they’re taking to reduce emissions. But according to newly revealed data from Good On You, large brands purchasing offsets don’t appear to be doing much more than large brands overall, explains Luis Rodriguez de Cespedes, manager of Good On You’s data systems. (We categorise brands as “large” based on annual turnover, following the widely adopted definition set out by the European Commission.)

Overall few large brands are adopting good practice when it comes to reducing their GHG emissions—and brands that purchase offsets are only somewhat more likely to be doing so than those that don’t.

Luis Rodriguez de Cespedes – manager of Good On You's data systems

We started by looking into the carbon reduction activities of a group of 30 brands that disclose they purchase offsets. We selected the sample of 30 offset brands based on their prominent disclosures of purchasing offsets—the overall number of fashion brands purchasing offsets is likely to be significantly higher, but we focused our data set on this sample that had clear disclosures to gain general insights into what actions these brands take beyond purchasing offsets.

We then compared that with a larger sample of brands that don’t disclose anything about purchasing offsets (for this sample, we selected 915 brands that do not disclose to CDP).

In comparing these two samples, we’re generally looking at the performance of brands known to purchase offsets with those that don’t. “The expectation is that brands should take meaningful reduction action before purchasing offsets,” says Gordon Renouf, co-founder of Good On You. “So our expectation would be that all brands purchasing offsets would be taking at least a few concrete actions [listed below] that would actually reduce their emissions. But the brands that have disclosed offsets are only somewhat more likely than their peers to be taking meaningful reduction activities.”

Our key finding is that most of the large brands that purchase offsets have not adopted best practice GHG reduction initiatives. Only 10% of brands that purchase offsets are taking action to reduce process emissions from manufacturing and only 5% report that they have initiatives to reduce emissions in raw material reduction, a high impact area.

As you can see in the chart below, when it comes to emissions reduction initiatives, most brands simply aren’t doing enough. And unfortunately, large brands that purchase offsets aren’t doing dramatically better as a group:

If large brands that bought offsets were taking carbon reduction seriously, you’d also expect to see them more publicly setting science-based GHG reduction targets and disclosing their progress against them. But yet again, brands that purchase offsets aren’t doing much more than large brands overall: 5% of large brands we assessed had set an approved Science Based Target—the current best standard for greenhouse gas emissions targets. For brands that purchase carbon offsets, the percentage was somewhat higher at 17%, but not as high as we might hope to see. And overall, as our latest data report on climate inaction underscores, the overwhelming majority of large brands overall aren’t disclosing their progress toward these targets even when they do set them.

If large brands that bought offsets were taking carbon reduction seriously, you’d similarly suspect they’d show more leadership on renewable energy throughout their supply chains, not only in direct operations. But our analysis found that no large brands that purchased offsets had also installed and purchased renewables in a medium or large portion of their supply chain.

Ultimately, Rodriguez de Cespedes concludes that “overall few large brands are adopting good practice to reduce their own emissions—and brands that purchase offsets are only somewhat more likely to be doing so than those that don’t.”

Fashion’s emissions are certain, but nature-based offsets aren’t

But aren’t offsets doing some good, you might rightly wonder? Of course, growing forests and preserving vegetation does remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere because that’s what plants naturally do, explains Phillip Williamson, honorary associate professor at the University of East Anglia’s School of Environmental Sciences. But it’s not as simple as what carbon offsets promise: “The problem is that biology is dynamic,” says Williamson. Such offsets are temporary due to the natural carbon cycle: plants die and break down, and the carbon they’ve stored is released again. “You’re just sort of putting off the problem for a bit longer.”

Alongside the natural carbon cycle, many other forces outside the control of carbon markets can impact whether offsets result in meaningful reductions. A planted tree can be felled, a restored habitat can be cleared for agriculture years or decades later, and extreme weather like wildfires can quickly destroy “preserved” forests. For example, recent devastating wildfires in Canada have resulted in millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere, and some of it has come directly from vegetation burned at a carbon offset project site. Beyond this, as European NGO ECOS has noted: “There is simply not enough space or time on the planet to grow trees and offset our way out of the climate crisis.”

There is simply no way to accurately declare that the carbon credits a company buys will result in the removal of a specific amount of carbon.

These kinds of concerns don’t only pertain to forests. Other forms of nature-based offsets come with problems, too. For example, Williamson specialises in coastal blue carbon—ie carbon captured by coastal and marine organisms like seagrass. He’s studied how widely the estimates of the rate at which blue carbon habitats can remove carbon vary. And he’s found that the highest and lowest estimates for how much carbon can be stored in coastal habitats can differ by up to a factor of 600. That leaves a lot of leeway for overestimation of the impact of nature-based offsets.

There is simply no way to accurately declare that the carbon credits a company buys will result in the removal of a specific amount of carbon. But as a 2021 Friends of the Earth paper states: “offsets are sold regardless of whether they will work over the long term”. And that’s where the problems start.

Investigations find popular offsets are “junk” and “largely a sham”

There’s a growing consensus among the experts we spoke to for this report: many of the most popular offsets sold are not delivering the reductions they promise. And this is reflected in numerous recent independent investigations, which have stirred controversy.

In January 2023, a nine-month investigation by The Guardian, Die Zeit, and SourceMaterial into the world’s leading certifier Verra concluded that more than 90% of its rainforest offset credits were “phantom credits” and therefore “did not represent genuine carbon reductions.” An independent analysis stated that, of 94.9m tonnes of CO2E credits claimed by Verra, there have been just 5.5m tonnes of real emissions reductions. The investigation found that reports of threats to forests were vastly overstated, meaning that “preserving” them had no real benefit, and only a handful of forests studied showed deforestation reduction.

Verra has publicly disputed the results. However, the findings of the investigation are in line with a broader, growing scientific consensus about the fundamental problems with the carbon market, and chime with other investigations and expert statements that date back over a decade.

Many of the most popular offsets sold are not delivering the reductions they promise. And this is reflected in numerous recent independent investigations, which have stirred controversy.

Another independent investigation, which was published just a few months later, said oil giant Chevron’s carbon offsets are “mostly junk”, and in 2022, an industry whistleblower revealed that Australia’s carbon credit scheme was “largely a sham”. “What is occurring is a fraud on the environment, a fraud on taxpayers, and a fraud on unwitting consumers,” professor Andrew Macintosh said at the time. Even Verra has had to dig into potentially dodgy offsets—in 2023, it initiated a quality review of its rice farming offsets used by Shell, later banning them.

The ways in which offsets can be considered a “sham” or “junk” varies. Alongside the overestimates and impermanence covered earlier, a lack of so-called additionality is an underlying issue. For instance, carbon credits that go to fund hydropower projects are based on the claim that without that funding, the renewable energy project would not have gone ahead. But experts argue that in the case of hydropower credits, many of these projects would go ahead regardless. They are not additional. If a forest was not really going to be cleared but its “preservation” is funded by carbon credits, that’s not additional. If one patch of forest is saved, but another is cleared in its place, that’s not additional.

In an investigation into what some experts have framed as Alaska’s “climate fraud” plan to produce carbon offsets from its forests without actually decreasing timber harvests, writer and researcher Stephen Lezak succinctly summed up the “additional” issue with a metaphor: “A [hypothetical] carbon offset that paid vegetarians to reduce their meat consumption is not additional because the vegetarians wouldn’t have consumed meat anyway.”

The Alaskan government’s plan to lease areas of its Tongass Nation Forest, seen here, for carbon credits without reducing its timber harvests exemplifies a lack of additionality.

“CO2lonialism”: how carbon offsets impact people, too

Among the creative carbon accounting and the threats to brand reputation, carbon offsets have also come under fire for human rights violations. Indigenous communities’ traditional knowledge and land management are vital to the future of our climate. And yet many have been subject to forced evictions, had their homes torn down, had their long-standing ecosystems disrupted, been swindled with low-value deals, and cut out of the conversation entirely.

But because the carbon market is so prevalent and other investment is near non-existent, many Indigenous peoples have become beholden to offset-based funding.

“When I was working at Amazon Watch basically every community that we worked with, across the Amazon, was involved in a carbon market programme of some shape or form,” says Krishnan. “There were a few holdouts and generally they were able to be holdouts because they were receiving funding from some other revenue stream. [But] the pressure is just immense. You are trying to get a floor put in your schoolhouse or trying to just have resources in the community. And a lot of these populations are totally neglected by the state. They’re playing the hand they’re dealt, and it’s been a very intentional political process.”

There is no doubt that Indigenous peoples must receive funding to further their vital work, but it should not be dictated by Western powers and it should not be used as permission to continue to pollute.

The Indigenous Environmental Network coined the term “CO2lonialism” to describe the colonial nature of offsetting and other such business-first “green” ventures. Indigenous groups have, for decades, opposed the implementation of various carbon offsetting schemes. They have been classified as both a “false solution” and a “death sentence”.

There is no doubt that Indigenous peoples must receive funding to further their vital work, but it should not be dictated by Western powers and it should not be used as permission to continue to pollute, Krishnan says. He highlights the Shandia Fund and Kawsak Sacha as examples of direct funding paths that could be an alternative to the currently flawed markets.

Offsets do nothing to decarbonise fashion’s value chain

Ultimately, our data suggests that offsets are serving as a distraction from the many actions brands can take to reduce emissions and decarbonise their own supply chains.

Depending on their size and control of their supply chain, the meaningful emissions reduction activities brands should consider include:

• using renewable energy in their production facilities, not only in the head office;
• undertaking production in close proximity to key consumer markets to reduce transport;
• using lower-impact materials;
• using more energy-efficient machinery;
• educating consumers on lower-impact garment care;
• and moving toward more circular, less carbon-intensive models.

It’s these kinds of specific actions brands can take in their own supply chains that Good On You recognises in rating fashion brands. “Our entire methodology is looking at the direct action a brand is doing to reduce its own impact,” explains Kristian Hardiman, head of ratings at Good On You. In this way, “it doesn’t make sense” to award brands for the vast majority of offsetting schemes that are promoted as they don’t directly lead to true emissions reductions in the value chain. That’s why brands that only choose offsets do not score highly for greenhouse gas reductions in the Good On You methodology.

“Of course, some emissions are unavoidable,” he continues. “But brands need to be taking action to address their reductions as the first priority, and right now, our data suggests that’s simply not happening at the scale and pace needed.”

Brands need to be taking action to address their reductions as the first priority, and right now, our ratings suggest that’s simply not happening at the scale and pace needed.

Kristian Hardiman – head of ratings at Good On You

While the experts continue to discuss the deeper problems, nature-based offsets remain in high demand. Unfortunately, the carbon offsetting market isn’t only confusing to consumers—many small and independent brands are targeted by predatory consultancies, which sell well-meaning brands on dubious offsets. As small brands often have less control and influence over their supply chains compared with larger brands, offsets can seem like a way to take action with the limited resources the brand may have access to.

“There’s a lot of people making money out of it. I’m not blaming all consultancies, but I do think there’s an issue with offering offsets as a first solution,” says Hardiman. “You get people thinking that they’re really, genuinely making a difference.”

Meanwhile, there’s one big number that continues to climb: the fashion industry’s estimated share of carbon emissions. Those emissions are only getting worse with fast fashion’s runaway overproduction.

Offsets will not save us from the climate crisis. It may sound obvious, but if fashion brands want to reduce their emissions, they need to actually reduce their emissions.

The post What Are Carbon Offsets? A Distraction From Fashion’s Runaway Emissions appeared first on Good On You.

Key stats based on an analysis of Good On You’s ratings for more than 5,900 brands:

• 81% of large brands with greenhouse gas emissions targets do not state whether they are on track to meet them. This underscores the need for governments to mandate reporting on greenhouse gas emissions.
• 0 of the 40 most profitable brands analysed receive Good On You’s top rating—“Great”—for the environment. This means these brands are not demonstrating leadership in environmental policies, transparency, or managing material issues across their supply chains.
• 60% of the most profitable brands analysed get the two lowest ratings for environment, “Not Good Enough” and “We Avoid”—meaning these brands publish little or no concrete information about their sustainability practices and are not adequately managing their impacts across their supply chains. In some cases, these brands may make ambiguous claims that are unlikely to have a material impact.
• Only 16% of all brands scored “Good” or “Great” across all areas (environment, labour, and animal welfare), demonstrating how the industry needs to do much better. This percentage includes a large share of small and independent labels showing leadership.
• 20% of large brands have a science-based greenhouse gas emissions target. Read on to see why this number should be higher.

New data shows fashion’s climate inaction

“The era of global boiling has arrived,” said António Guterres, the UN secretary general, during 2023’s summer of widespread wildfires and extreme heat. “Climate change is here. It is terrifying. And it is just the beginning.” Despite such stark warnings, everywhere you look, from political slogans to fashion campaigns, we often hear greenwashing more than we see meaningful action.

As COP28 gets underway in Dubai—that is, the 28th meeting of the 197 signatories of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change—we’ve hit a critical moment for the future. The results of the first ever global stocktake will be discussed this year. So, for the first time there will be an assessment of the progress made towards mitigating global warming since the 2015 Paris Agreement, which saw nations pledge to make efforts to limit global warming to “well below” 2 degrees and ideally 1.5 degrees. Early reporting from the UN suggests that although the Paris Agreement led to “near universal climate action” the global community is still “not on track” to meet the goals set in 2015, despite a “rapidly narrowing window” of opportunity.

This is the status at the macro level, but that global picture is made up of smaller national, industrial, and individual actions. As the resource intensive fashion industry has a significant impact on climate change, it’s also important that we have a handle on what impact the fashion industry is having and where it’s going.

But since there’s nothing quite like COP for fashion brands—no mandated progress disclosure—it’s difficult to track. That’s where Good On You’s comprehensive data on fashion brands comes into play. Having rated thousands of brands on these issues, Good On You’s data can give us a sense of the industry’s report card on environmental policies.

The view from COP28

In 2021, Good On You kickstarted a first-of-its-kind data project to get a sense of how the fashion industry is working to address its impacts on the planet. The resulting report offered the deepest look yet at the actions brands of all sizes are and aren’t taking.

Now on the cusp of COP28, Good On You has expanded the scope of the project even further—looking at the ratings of more than 5,900 brands. Despite observing some positive steps forward, the overwhelming narrative remains the same this time around. Spoiler alert: It’s too much greenwashing, too little action.

This bird’s eye view of fashion’s climate action shows that it’s just not where it needs to be. And the words of Inger Anderson, the executive director of the UN Environment Programme, acutely illustrate why: “We had our chance to make incremental changes, but that time is over. Only a root-and-branch transformation of our economies and societies can save us from accelerating climate disaster.”

It's too much greenwashing, too little action.

This should be a rallying cry for the industry at large, but it often feels like the brands with the power to make the most change are operating as if there’s no tomorrow.

Take the latest annual Textiles 2030 progress update from WRAP, a climate action NGO. It reported that improvement actions have helped reduce the carbon impact of textiles by 12% and the water impact by 4% on a per tonne basis. This should be good news worth celebrating, but this reduction was largely negated by a 13% increase in production volumes, despite urgent calls from many sides for degrowth. This means that the overall carbon footprint actually dropped by just 2% and the overall water footprint increased by 8%.

There are some positive signs, of course. More brands are signing up to the Science Based Targets initiative, for instance, and more small brands are committing to measuring greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. But there’s a problem: most major brands, which are responsible for the lion’s share of the industry’s emissions, aren’t disclosing their progress toward their targets—a huge 81% of large brands with greenhouse gas emissions targets do not state whether they are on track to meet them. That’s not exactly the urgency we need to see.

Context: fashion’s responsibility to act

As part of the 2015 Paris Agreement, governments were asked to create action plans. But it was up to them to decide what action to take, and they missed the mark significantly. The title and subtitle for the latest Emissions Gap Report 2023, which came out in November, says it all: “Broken record: temperatures hit new highs, yet world fails to cut emissions (again)”.

“There is no person or economy left on the planet untouched by climate change, so we need to stop setting unwanted records on greenhouse gas emissions, global temperature highs and extreme weather,” Inger Andersen, executive director of the UN Environment Programme, said in a statement around the report’s launch. “We must instead lift the needle out of the same old groove of insufficient ambition and not enough action, and start setting other records: on cutting emissions, on green and just transitions and on climate finance.”

The scorecard for businesses, which the UN calls “non-state actors”, is probably equally as poor. Reliable, peer-reviewed figures are often hard to come by. That’s especially true in fashion due to the supply chain’s inherent complexity. But as an industry that spans the globe, with single garments often traversing between countless countries including China, the US, the UK, Vietnam, India, Ghana, and Bangladesh within their lifecycle, fashion’s impacts are not trivial.

The UN estimates that the multi-trillion-dollar industry is responsible for 8-10% of the world’s GHG emissions. While other estimates vary, the point remains the same: fashion’s impact is far from trivial. As an industry predicated on growth, that figure could well increase if left unchecked. And in a world scrambling to limit emissions, the story this data tells about large brands expanding production and no reporting progress on their goals is a dangerous one.

But greenwashing remains far too rampant

The average fashion consumer could be forgiven for thinking their favourite brands have responded robustly to climate concerns. From environmental mission statements to promises of cutting emissions and eliminating waste, the fashion industry outwardly seems to have transformed into a custodian of our collective future. “Fashion made from waste and grapes? Welcome to the future”, says one high street behemoth. “We’re facing up the future, doing more for our clothes, our suppliers, our communities, and our impact on the environment,” promises another brand.

It appears that every fashion brand is doing its very best, setting targets such as “we’ll achieve net zero across our value chain by 2030”, and “[our goal is to] be climate positive by 2040”. However, beyond the snappy promises lies a very different reality.

That’s what’s often considered greenwashing—the unjustified and misleading claims from fashion brands that their products are more environmentally friendly than they really are. This manifests in various ways. Sometimes it’s outright deception. Sometimes it’s more subtle advertising. Often, it’s brands making ambitious claims without being transparent around their actual impacts.

Beyond avoiding those misleading claims, the most effective response to greenwashing is for brands to be fully transparent about their impact and how they’re addressing the key issues in their supply chains. That’s why this report goes beyond the greenwashed claims and focuses on data about what brands are really doing.

Most brands we rated aren’t doing enough

Most fashion brands get low scores for their environmental policies, according to Good On You’s rigorous and independent brand ratings. To rate brands, Good On You looks past each brand’s claims and analyses its actions across more than 100 key sustainability issues. Good On You considers a variety of indicators of environmental impact and progress. These include emissions reduction activities, target setting, and the measurement of scope one, two, and three GHG emissions (this means not only counting emissions from brand-controlled sources like offices and warehouses but all indirect emissions like those from energy use, purchased products, and even employee commuting). The environmental ratings also factor in resource management, chemical use, and water use.

Each brand is labeled on a scale of 1 (“We Avoid”) to 5 (“Great”), with brands on the upper end of that scale representing the leaders for their policies. You can find out more about how Good On You’s ratings work here.

For this report, Good On You analysed 5,905 brands, which have our most up to date ratings. It’s important to note that this is not a random sample of fashion brands. Among them are many major fashion houses, high street shops, and a significant selection of smaller,  sustainable labels. The sample includes a disproportionate share of sustainable brands, meaning these stats are even rosier than the reality (percentages rounded to the nearest whole number):

Smaller brands are scoring better for the planet

Smaller sustainable brands are leading the charge for progress compared with large brands, which Good On You defines based on annual turnover. Their efforts boost the results and make Good On You’s industry-wide data look more impressive than it really is.

If we remove the more sustainable brands from the mix, you’re looking at a much bleaker picture. In other words, the sustainable brands in this sample demonstrate it’s possible to do much better.

Not all climate targets are up to snuff

The big brands are setting bold targets, but a little digging reveals the targets are not all they’re made out to be. As we’ve seen, brands are rushing to set impressive-sounding targets to show their customers how concerned they are about the climate.

Nearly half. It sounds great, but some targets mean more than others.

It’s that “science-based” bit that really matters. Kristian Hardiman, Head of Ratings at Good On You, explains that the “base year” brands choose can make a huge difference. “When I first started working in climate change, loads of brands were setting 2007—the year before the global financial crisis—as their base year. Emissions were quite high and then they dropped, so if they set a target of a 30% reduction compared to 2007, they were already there, they didn’t really have to do much,” he says, adding that he expects 2019, the year before COVID, to become the next base year.

As we’ve previously reported, science-based targets help to avoid that kind of sneaky carbon accounting by ensuring that targets are set in line with the internationally agreed 2 or 1.5 degree warming limit. “The Science Based Target initiative has really done the work of what it would mean for a company to align themselves with the Paris Agreement framework,” explains Maxine Bédat, author of Unraveled and Director of the New Standard Institute. “It’s a way to draw a line in the sand between corporate greenwashing and real action.”

The most profitable aren’t leading the way

The most profitable fashion brands are getting the lowest scores for their environmental policies. Some pin hopes for the future on the largest companies with the thickest wallets to fund and drive solutions. But Good On You’s data suggests they’re simply not putting in the work.

For this report, Good On You looked at the ratings for the most profitable brands listed on FashionUnited’s annual index, considered by many to be the benchmarks of profitability across private and public brands. Of the top 40 brands analysed, the numbers paint a picture of the most powerful brands doing the very least.

“I would say that climate change is the area where brands greenwash or try to deceive consumers the most,” says Hardiman. That can be successful because consumers aren’t supply chain or carbon emissions experts.

“We can’t just rely on consumers because consumers can’t be deeply educated in all of these things. That’s way too much of an expectation to put on regular people,” says Bédat. “And so, what we’re seeing is tightening legislation.”

Large brands not transparent about progress

On a consumer level, greenwashing erodes trust. On an environmental level, this lack of meaningful action further derails the path toward achieving the 1.5 degree limit. As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said in the final part of its sixth assessment released in March, “there is a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all.”

Nations are expected to revise and report on their actions every five years (the reason behind COP28’s global stocktake) and yet:

Analysis: make unsustainable against the law

If this report tells us anything, the lack of transparency from large brands is a clear sign it’s time governments pass laws that mandate environmental reporting alongside prohibiting misleading claims.

In January 2023, the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) launched an investigation into ASOS, Boohoo and Asda to scrutinise their green claims. The CMA said it “is concerned about the way the firms’ products are being marketed to customers as eco-friendly.” This is a tangible follow-up to the release of its Green Claims Code in 2021 which laid bare exactly how brands should and shouldn’t communicate when it comes to sustainability claims.

Later in 2023, the EU reached a provisional agreement on new rules to ban misleading advertisements and provide customers with better product information. Generic environmental claims such as “environmentally friendly” and “eco” will be banned “without proof of recognised excellent environmental performance relevant to the claim.” This push for honesty in sustainability marketing goes hand in hand with its updated Ecodesign Directive which establishes frameworks for making products more durable, reliable, reusable, upgradable, repairable, recyclable and easier to maintain. Also among the Ecodesign Directive requirements is a Digital Product Passport, a concept that would allow environmental information such as product provenance and options for repair to be easily accessed by scanning a QR code or a chip.

These are clear signs it's time governments pass laws that mandate environmental reporting.

The European push for transparency is echoed globally in other policy and legislation proposals such as the New York Fashion Act, which calls for fashion retailers and manufacturers that do business in New York and have global revenues exceeding $100 million to disclose, among other things, supply chain details, environmental due diligence policies, the annual volume of materials produced, and impact reduction targets (which they would be required to meet and report compliance  on annually). If passed, these proposed laws and regulations could mean brands face up against fines, sanctions, denial of government aid, and the embarrassment of having to make public retractions and corrections when they’re found in violation.

Challenges in sustainability communications

Despite a crackdown on greenwashing, it’s not resigned to the past. Ostensibly earth-friendly claims still draw consumers and there are cynical forces at play. But fashion academic and strategist Frederica Brooksworth says a lack of sustainability knowledge is also to blame where the professionals communicating these messages are concerned.

Marketers are entering a seemingly creative profession and then tasked with relaying highly complex, scientific information in an accessible way. “I’ve been pushing for law to be taught on fashion programmes and I’ve run my own courses for three years,” she says. “We have a responsibility as educators to really enforce this within the curriculum. If you’re teaching fashion marketing, you need to look at it in terms of consumer protection.

An emerging response to consumer and legal allegations of greenwashing is brands turning on their heels and being brutally honest about their shortcomings. Ganni decided to tell the world “Why we’re not a sustainable brand”, perhaps borrowing from Noah’s 2018 missive along the same lines, while Ace & Tate said, “Look, we f*cked up”, and listed five “bad moves” it had made as a brand, including setting an unrealistic carbon goal. Taking this a step further, some brands are now simply saying nothing at all, a practice that’s been called “greenhushing”. This is to avoid scrutiny on green claims made, but scrutiny is exactly what’s needed for consumers and regulators to ensure action is meaningful and aligned with wider industry and global targets.

Technically, yes, these brands aren’t pretending to be greener than they are, but they are carving a path of least resistance, digging out leeway to do less, aim a little lower. “It’s fine, work on it, but just don’t make it your main message, because then it’s not authentic,” says Brooksworth.

Conclusion: at a critical tipping point

We’re at a critical tipping point for our future, and the pervasiveness of greenwashing—despite overdue regulatory scrutiny—means we simply do not know whether brands are acting on their own self-promoted plans. Updates and ambition are a key metric for COP28 and indeed a habitable climate in future, yet fashion brands who play a key role in protecting that future are obfuscating reality. Some major brands are being more transparent than they were a few years ago. We need to accelerate this change.

With the window of opportunity closing, transparency seems like the bare minimum. “Saying that you can’t operate unless you are operating within the bounds of the planet,” Bédat says, “it seems eminently reasonable, doesn’t it?”

The post Is Fashion Making Progress on Climate Change? We Rated 5,900 Brands to Find Out appeared first on Good On You.

A consumerism reality check

Our grandparents are often held up as sustainability role models. There are countless articles that explain why we should shop like them, or how and what we can learn from them. It’s certainly true that they bought less, mended more, and kept things for longer. But why?

Were the generations that went before us just morally better? Are younger generations hell bent on trashing the planet through consumerism? Not quite.

World War II, rationing, and post-war austerity were catalysts for a “make do and mend” approach and a more frugal attitude to everything from food to clothes, while the explosion of a globalised fashion industry and the rise of cheap fast fashion have significantly altered perceptions of value for subsequent generations.

We’ve been herded towards this reality over the course of a century by people seeking maximum profits, and with each generation came more tricks and more pressure to shop till we drop.

From need to desire

The dawn of mass production in America spawned a necessity for consumers to buy all the stuff that was now being churned out at great volume. It was a new way of doing things and corporations were nervous that consumers would reach a point where they felt they had a sufficient number of possessions and would simply stop buying things.

That would be no good at all. After all, what’s the good in making products only for no one to buy them?

There’s no profit if there’s no customer. Investment banker of the era Paul Mazur had a plan. “We must shift America from a needs to a desires culture. People must be trained to desire, to want new things, even before the old have been entirely consumed. We must shape a new mentality in America. Man’s desire must overshadow his needs,” he wrote in the Harvard Business Review in 1927.

Why buy a coat to keep you warm if you already have one that does the job? But how could you possibly resist a coat that will make you feel and appear more elegant, professional, or attractive?

Even if you’ve never read that quote before, the overarching concept is likely familiar. Most of us continue to buy new clothes even when we have a wardrobe full of them at home. Mazur and his peers at the time reshaped how products were sold. Advertisements became less descriptive and more emotional. It was no longer about what products could do but how they could make you feel. Why buy a coat to keep you warm if you already have one that does the job? But how could you possibly resist a coat that will make you feel and appear more elegant, professional, or attractive?

Mrs Stillman was a celebrity aviator in the 1920s who could be considered one of the first fashion influencers, addressing consumers at department stores and via promotional films. “I’m sure all of you are interesting,” she said to an audience at the time, “and have wonderful things about you, but looking at you on the street, you all look so much the same … Try and express yourselves better in your dress.”

While expressing status or character through clothing was once the preserve of the wealthy, now women who visited department stores were encouraged to see fashion as an aspirational tool. If only they bought this dress or that fur stole, they could be just like the celebrities they desired to emulate.

Using up, not wearing out

Of course, the act of purchasing new clothes had to be sustained. If a woman bought one gown and then was completely satisfied, it was hardly a money-spinning business model.

So, in 1932, two advertising executives, Egmont Arens and Roy Sheldon, built upon Mazur’s concept in a book entitled Consumer Engineering: A New Technique for Prosperity. “Goods fall into two classes: those that we use, such as motor cars and safety razors, and those that we use up, such as toothpaste or soda biscuits. Consumer engineering must see to it that we use up the kind of goods we now merely use,” they wrote.

“Why would you want last year’s handbag when this year’s handbag is so much more attractive? Does there seem to be a sad waste in this process? Not at all. Wearing things out does not produce prosperity. Buying things does,” they continued.

We’re now very aware that there is indeed a very sad waste in this process. There are likely millions upon millions of “last year’s handbags” in landfill, but unburdened by the visual proof that we now have, advertising executives forged ahead, encouraging a cycle of consumption and waste in the name of prosperity.

A century of marketing

Early marketing, advertising, and PR pioneers blazed a trail for emotional advertising and influencing consumer desires. Every time you see an advert for some leggings that will make you feel empowered or a jacket that will bring out the adventurer in you, you have them to thank (or, more likely, curse).

And the methods used to keep us shopping have only got more sophisticated ever since. Tugging at our emotions and vanities now feels almost quaint.

Every time you see an advert for some leggings that will make you feel empowered, you have the marketers to thank.

Retailers use heat maps to see exactly what shoppers are drawn to in stores; cameras can count how many people turn to look at a mannequin or display; different consumers are shown different versions of the same website so brands know which images or words encourage more clicks and purchases; smartphones serve us scarily specific targeted ads; influencers act like they’re our friends in order to encourage us to shop; consumer psychologists dig deep into our psyches and then use that knowledge to sell things to us.

As consumers, we are being nudged, choreographed, and manipulated almost every second of the day in ways we could scarcely imagine. With such a deluge of expertise being used against us, it’s no wonder we can’t stop thinking about the next addition to our wardrobes.

Fashion on fast forward

As all these clever methods were developed, brands began to speed up the frequency at which they released new products. It began on the high street. One big fashion boss realised customers would come into his shops, look around, and then go home to think about whether they wanted to buy what they’d seen, safe in the knowledge it would still be there in three or four weeks’ time. This wasn’t good enough. He wanted people to buy his products there and then, so he hatched a plan: add new products to the store every two weeks to keep people coming back to see what’s new and—crucially—remove old stock to drive a “get it or regret it” mindset among his customers.

It worked, and so the practice spread. Seasons were replaced by so-called micro seasons in stores, meaning that there could be tens or even hundreds of new trends and collections released every single year.

As consumers, we are being nudged, choreographed, and manipulated almost every second of the day in ways we could scarcely imagine.

The consumer climate this business model induced proved to be fertile ground for online retailers. Initially, they very much echoed brick and mortar stores in terms of volume and new offerings, just operating online instead. But soon, they realised the lack of stores and the need to uniformly fill rails gave them more flexibility. Brands could copy a look a celebrity had worn on the front of a glossy magazine, have a few hundred units of it produced in just a couple of weeks, test it to see if it sold, and order more if it did. It was a completely new, reactive way to operate and it did the trick. Once consumers realised they didn’t have to wait months to be able to participate in a new trend, they were hooked. People could emulate their favourite celebrity (and later, influencer) in a matter of days.

Seeing the value in lightning-fast production, fast fashion e-commerce retailers started to add new products every day to keep people coming back for more. Brands reduced lead times (the time it takes to go from initial design to a product being for sale) from weeks to just days, and as each new name sought to be the biggest and best, the number of products being added every day grew, with some adding thousands daily. Couple all this with the fact that buying new clothes triggers our ancient, internal reward system and makes us feel good, and we begin to see exactly why we’ve come to shop in the way we do. Without the space to pause, reflect, and question, we find ourselves on a non-stop conveyor belt of consumption to the detriment of our wellbeing and the planet. We need a better system.

The post The Consumerism Reality Check We All Need in a Shifting Shopping Climate appeared first on Good On You.

4 Q&As with Liz Ricketts of The Or Foundation

Based in Accra, Ghana, The Or Foundation is a non-profit organisation working towards a justice-led circular economy, supporting people working within, and impacted by, the global second hand supply chain.

1. Q: What do you consider to be the primary drivers for Accra and Kantamanto Market ending up as a dumping ground for the Global North?

A: In a word: colonialism. Under colonial rule, local citizens were required to conform to professional dress codes as defined by the British. People were required to swap their local dress for a suit and tie if they wanted to enter certain buildings or get certain jobs [and] the British utilised dress codes within schools and churches to demean indigenous dress. This created an artificial demand for Western-style clothing.

At first, access to Western clothing was quite restricted but this changed in the 1950s when the rise of mass-produced fashion transformed clothing into a consumable commodity. The second hand clothing trade was introduced to the Global North consumer, marketed as charity, allowing them to consume more clothes guilt free because there was now an outlet for their excess stuff.

After [economic changes] in the 1980s, employment within Ghana’s textile sector declined from a high of 25,000 jobs in 1975 to 5,000 in 2000. More second hand clothing began flooding into Ghana because locally made textiles and garments were no longer running at capacity and many who were employed in the local textile industry became second hand sellers. The great acceleration of fast fashion has only intensified the Global North’s reliance on Kantamanto as an outlet for excess clothing and in turn the lowering quality leaves Kantamanto retailers dependent on a system where they have to sell higher quantities of a cheaper product to stay out of debt.

2. Q: Why do consumers think people “need” our second hand clothes?

A: This is where colonialism comes in again, I’m afraid. It is difficult for people living in receiving countries across the Global South to represent themselves and their reality so most people living in the Global North have a skewed perception of what life is like in Ghana and across the African continent. There are not hordes of naked people in need of second hand clothes—and there are more seamstresses per capita in Ghana than anywhere in the Global North, all busy sewing custom, made-to-measure clothing. Many of the people who visit us from outside of Ghana remark on how well-dressed and stylish people are, surprised because this clashes with the poverty narrative they have been fed.

There are not hordes of naked people in need of second hand clothes—and there are more seamstresses per capita in Ghana than anywhere in the Global North, all busy sewing custom, made-to-measure clothing.

3. Q: Some people see the sheer volume of what arrives at the market and feel that it’s too big a problem to solve. What are the solutions?

A: Kantamanto serves as a model of what a sustainable fashion ecosystem looks like. Imagine if every store you shopped in had just as many sewing machines as clothing racks? This is Kantamanto. Consumers don’t come to Kantamanto looking to buy clothing off the rack; they come looking for material that they can customise. Right next to a retailer is a tailor who can make garments fit perfectly, dyers who can change the colour of stained clothes, and upcyclers who can combine garments to make one-of-a-kind creations. The mindset and skillset that make Kantamanto a hub of creativity are exactly what is needed.

On the ground in Ghana, we are working to catalyse a justice-led circular economy. This involves the development of new materials made from textile waste, debt relief for Kantamanto retailers, alternative livelihoods for young women who labour in modern day slavery carrying bales of clothing on their heads, and scientific research to determine how we can safely clean up the waste at the bottom of the sea.

4. Q: What should you do with your old clothes?

A: For that I have no simple solution. We simply don’t have the infrastructure to keep clothing … out of landfill. As a general rule, keep as much as you can as close to home as you can. Try to find charities that operate on a referral model so that your items will go to someone who has expressed an explicit need.

Learn to sew. You don’t need to make your own clothes, but knowing how to sew a button back on a shirt is a life skill that goes a long way to tackling fashion’s waste crisis.

Last but not least, listen to communities like Kantamanto. Sustainability is a language and a language can be lost within one generation. Unfortunately, most of the Global North has lost it. The good news? Communities like Kantamanto are still fluent. All we have to do is listen.

The post Q&A: The Or Foundation on the Realities of the Global Second Hand Clothing Market appeared first on Good On You.

What happens to your cast-offs?

Let’s peel the plaster off quickly: every single second, the equivalent of a rubbish-truckload of clothes is burned or buried in landfill. That’s an unimaginable amount of clothing going to waste, clothing that is the product of human skill and precious natural resources. Some of each truckload will come from manufacturers and brands in the form of offcuts, waste, and the estimated 30% of items that are never sold. However, a lot of it comes from consumers too, either directly or indirectly.

In 2018, Americans threw away 17m tons of textiles, representing 5.8% of municipal solid waste. The main source of these textiles was discarded clothing. By comparison, just 1.7m tons of textiles were thrown out in 1960. Americans aren’t the only culprits of course. The average European is said to throw around 11kgs (24lbs) of clothes, shoes, and fabric goods out annually, while as a nation, Singapore throws out one tonne of textile waste every five minutes.

If you’re horrified at the idea of throwing stuff away and diligent about what you do with clothes you no longer wear—donating them to your local charity shop for instance—you may be thinking that yours couldn’t possibly be part of that mountain of waste.

Fashion consumption ramped up at such a rapid pace that there was simply no time to put proper, robust systems in place.

But, in fact, it’s very likely that they are, despite your best efforts. I’m certain that many of my old clothes now languish in landfills across the globe.

Some of them are there because a younger me simply threw stuff in the bin as I didn’t know any better, but some of the pieces I’ve carefully washed, sorted, and donated are likely there right alongside them.

That’s because fashion consumption ramped up at such a rapid pace that there was simply no time to put proper, robust systems in place that could cope with us all constantly clearing out to make space for the billions upon billions of new clothes that are manufactured each year.

Charity shops can’t handle the volume of waste

Let’s imagine you’ve just had a wardrobe clear-out and it’s all bagged up for charity, either for a local shop or a donation bin. You’d assume that it would all end up on the rails of a shop, but as much as 90% of charity donations are exported. Part of the reason for this is that charity shops often can’t handle the amount of clothes we want to donate. The re-opening period after COVID-19 lockdowns laid this bare.

People who were stuck at home with time on their hands, people in need of a distraction from reality and just about everyone else it seems, decluttered their homes, which were also doubling up as schools, workplaces, and social spaces. The clothes that had once brought people joy were now making them feel hemmed in, so the second charity shops opened again, people wanted to get rid of those bags and boxes piled up by the front door. But because everyone had the same idea, charity shops had no choice but to turn people away.

Even without the extraordinary circumstances created by a pandemic, collectively we just have too much stuff that we’re desperate to get rid of. So, charity shops sell the many tonnes of clothes they can’t put on the rails to rag merchants.

Donated clothes get dumped on Africa

Once clothes are in the hands of rag merchants, they’re generally sorted by quality. Some is landfilled or incinerated (another bit of that truckload), some is downcycled into things like mattress filling and insulation, the rest wrapped in plastic and exported.

Rag merchants send clothes all around the world, but the Global South is an area of particular focus, with more than 70% of clothing donated globally going to Africa alone. Charity campaigns, appeals, and cultural misrepresentations have created a narrative that all countries in the Global South are “needy” and therefore should be happy to receive what others no longer want.

This way of thinking has led to 15m items a week landing at Kantamanto market in Accra, Ghana. And of those 15m items, 40% ends up in landfill almost immediately because it’s of poor quality, damaged or unsuitable for the Ghanaian climate and local style preferences.

In the very early days of exportation, some of the clothes were wanted because of their ties to British style, a shadow of superiority cast by many years of colonial rule. But donations soon ramped up to unsustainable levels and dropped significantly in both quality and price, undercutting and destroying local textile economies and leaving locals drowning in plastic- wrapped bales of clothes.

There is no such thing as ‘away’

As Annie Leonard of Greenpeace once famously said, “There is no such thing as ‘away’. So, when we throw it away, it must go somewhere.” Kantamanto market, Accra, is just one example of that somewhere. Kenya, Rwanda, and Zambia are also somewhere, as are Haiti and Chile.

The countries that are treated as our collective “away” have become so used to being inundated with cast-offs from the Global North that they’ve created a language around it. Obroni wawu, the Ghanaian phrase, perhaps sums it up best: loosely translated, it means “dead white man’s clothes”.

While once it would have been reasonable to have absolutely no idea what happened after you handed over your donation bag, now the word is very much out. Thanks to the work of organisations like The Or Foundation, a non-profit which operates in Kantamanto market, the everyday consumer is now able to see the impact clothing exports are having. Stories of injuries or deaths related to porters carrying bales on their heads weighing over 55 kgs (121 lbs) can now be heard, and photos of piles of unsellable clothing littering the shores of Ghanaian beaches are widely shared. (But that’s not to say all of the clothes become waste. The Or Foundation explains that the Kantamanto community successfully recirculates a “minimum of 25m garments every month”. That’s a level of circularity and sustainability fashion brands from the Global North dream of).

Obroni wawu, the Ghanaian phrase, perhaps sums it up best: loosely translated, it means 'dead white man’s clothes'.

Many dedicated fashion followers recoiled when they opened Twitter and saw photos of the Atacama Desert in Chile hidden beneath mountains of clothes. A short distance from a local port, it’s become a desert landfill for more than half of the 60,000 tonnes of clothing imported each year. Even if you don’t really do social media and haven’t seen the photos or heard the stories, you’ve very likely watched a travel documentary and seen the odd person in a remote area wearing an old-season football shirt or a sweatshirt that you saw on your local high street a few years back. I used to think it was just trends spreading globally: it’s actually fashion waste spreading globally instead.

<1% of textile waste is recycled into new clothes

You may very well be feeling that you never want to donate another piece of clothing again, so perhaps you’ll give recycling a try instead. Given how much brands talk about recycling the clothes we return, or making clothes from recycled materials, you’ll be forgiven for thinking that fashion has recycling covered. But currently, it’s estimated that less than 1% of textile waste is recycled into new fibres for clothing.

There are a few reasons for this. Firstly, once again, we just made too many clothes too quickly for technology to provide enough solutions and, secondly, clothes can be tricky to recycle because they are made up of so many different components.

A quick check of a few labels in your wardrobe will show that most of our clothes are made of blends. Very often it’s cotton mixed with polyester, but it can be a mix of a host of materials. One designer camisole I saw recently advertised was made up of acetate, viscose, cotton, polyester, and polyamide. Add threads, zips, buttons, eyelets, drawstrings, and all the other many finishes and you’ve got a whole lot of materials in one garment.

You might notice that fashion and activewear brands tend to favour recycling bottles over recycling old polyester clothes.

Now, think of your household waste for a second. It must be carefully sorted into different material categories so it reaches the right waste stream. Separating paper from plastics, tins from cardboard has become a part of life for most, but it’s simply impossible for us to separate the cotton threads from the polyester threads from the viscose. So, off our clothes go to recycling in one big, amalgamated blend.

Very much like donated clothing, most clothing dropped into recycling bins or handed into shops running recycling schemes is downcycled into rags, padding, and insulation. But there is that tiny less than 1% that is recycled into fibres for new clothes, showing it is possible on some level. Natural fibres like cotton, wool, and linen would generally be mechanically recycled; shredded by machines and respun into new yarn. However, the process shortens the fibres, making them weaker, and they must usually be blended with virgin fibres to ensure they’re durable enough to be wearable.

Synthetic materials such as polyester and nylon can be recycled mechanically or chemically, whereby they’re melted before being re-spun into new fibre. So, yes, technically your old rain jacket could be recycled, but you might notice that fashion and activewear brands tend to favour recycling bottles over recycling old polyester clothes. Why? Because they’re not “contaminated” with all those finishes and fixings mentioned earlier, making the process quicker, easier, and more cost effective.

Innovations provide some cautious hope

Though the current clothing recycling system is barely making a dent, there are people out there working hard on innovations to improve it.

Selected companies are developing exciting new technologies to push recycling forwards, which are being trialled by global brands. Cotton waste can be dissolved into pulp and turned into brand new fabrics; garments can become recycled thread with the help of robotics; polyester and cotton can be separated and turned back into raw materials; end-of-life textiles can undergo “molecular regeneration” to become new materials and garments can be made with threads that dissolve in heat, making it faster and easier to disassemble and recycle them.

If they can operate on a global scale, these new technologies could certainly help keep clothes out of landfill, especially those that are beyond repair.

But each has its own environmental drawback, whether it’s the use of chemicals, water, or the need for heat, so the ultimate solution is keeping garments, or at least the fabric they’re made from, in use for as long as possible without the need to recycle them into new fibres.

Clothing is a precious resource

It may not seem like it due to the manner in which it’s discarded, but clothing is a precious resource. It takes from the earth in the form of crops, water, nutrients, or oil, and many skilled hands are involved in cultivating, manufacturing, spinning, and sewing it. Because it was more expensive and less readily available, clothing and fabric used to be treasured more highly. What could no longer be repaired was repurposed into new garments or made into children’s clothes, and when they could no longer be repaired, the fabric was used as dusters or rags. Clothing used to have a long and varied life, as it should, and now a growing number of creatives are reigniting that reality.

From high-end designers to hobbymakers, people are cutting used garments up, then splicing and tessellating them back together into one-of-a-kind garments. Patchwork coats, dresses with clashing panels, and jumpers that are half scarf, half vintage blanket are breathing new life into old clothes and livening up wardrobes. Two holey pairs of trousers can become a jacket, a drawer full of odd socks can be made into a corset; there are no rules, only endless ideas.

The ultimate solution is keeping garments, or at least the fabric they’re made from, in use for as long as possible without the need to recycle them into new fibres

In countries overloaded with cast-offs from the Global North, many designers specialise in reimagining worn-out t-shirts, hoodies, shirts, and sweaters, turning them into wearable garments and selling them to international audiences. One brand, Buzigahill, describes it as “redesigning second hand clothes and redistributing them to the Global North”. These brands most certainly set the tone for the others following suit, some using textiles from Kantamanto market, some using unsold stock from department store warehouses and others using everything from worn-out jeans to old nightgowns.

For now, landfill remains the default destination for our cast-offs, even those intended to end up elsewhere, but if we can scale positive solutions in a meaningful way, which truly interrupts the buy–wear–discard pipeline at the same time as decreasing consumption, then we can start to have an impact.

The post Every Second, a Truckload of Clothes Is Destroyed—How Did We Get Here? appeared first on Good On You.

The growing calls for government action

“The fashion industry has marked its own homework for too long.” Those are the words of the UK’s Environmental Audit Committee in a report calling for British legislators to urgently act to regulate global fashion brands.

That’s because the industry—despite brands releasing their own codes of conduct, sustainability action plans, and verbose ethical manifestos—has so far failed to hold itself accountable.

Inarguably the biggest trend in fashion over the past decade is that its negative impacts have gotten depressingly worse. That’s rising carbon emissions, environmentally devastating waste and pollution, human rights violations, and worker exploitation at every turn.

So far, letting the industry grade itself has led to little substantive change.

Industry action and collaboration is crucial. But so far, letting the industry grade itself has led to little substantive change. That’s why people in all corners of the world are calling for fashion, like other sectors, to be more closely regulated.

But in an industry as far-reaching as fashion, setting effective rules is far from clearcut. The push for legislation raises many challenging questions: can regional laws actually reign in often-shady supply chains that crisscross continents? Can governments, which have so far failed to hold themselves accountable on things like climate targets, effectively hold brands to account? And what role do consumers have to play in this tangled mess?

To get answers, we’ve tapped leading activists and academics to help you understand the current drive for legislation—and what effective rules could realistically achieve.

Fashion regulation is long overdue, experts say

“We waited a really long time for the industry to regulate itself,” says Maeve Galvin, global policy director at Fashion Revolution. “But it’s so unregulated, and we have a climate crisis looming. As a result there is an urgency and policymakers have stepped up.”

Policymakers are the people who are responsible for making action plans and regulations—including legislators, members of parliament (MPs), congresspeople, government staff, and special advisors.

Many policymakers believe the fashion industry has been given enough chances to sort out its own mess.

And many of them have decided that the fashion industry has been given enough chances to sort out its own mess. Now is the time, they say, to put some laws and regulations in place. But for many people, it’s long overdue.

Nazma Akter, founder of the Awaj Foundation, has been fighting to improve workers’ rights in the garment sector for over 32 years. Her first experience of the sector was as a child worker, aged 11. “If there is no legislation, there is no legally binding agreement, then there is no protection, and there are no rights,” she tells me.

“You don’t have accountability, and you don’t have the responsibility as a company,” she says. “They can do whatever they want.”

High level: how it could work

Let’s step back for a moment: the general idea of breaking the law is a pretty strong deterrent for most people. And for those that legislation doesn’t deter, there’s typically a punishment or penalty involved. That’s the same general idea behind regulating fashion: set rules that determine what brands should do, then punish those who don’t comply.

The general idea: set rules that determine what brands should do, then punish those who don’t comply.

Those punishments could include things like fines, being publicly listed as having broken the rules, or being denied access to government aid programmes, explains Galvin. Brands could also be forced to pay compensation to those they’ve harmed and pay to resolve problems they’ve caused—for instance, paying to bring a supplier factory up to proper safety standards.

However, seeing people get away with breaking the rules happens in all areas of life. So for legislation to be effective, there needs to be mechanisms that ensure companies are being compliant.

Regional laws could have international impact

Much of the legislation currently being proposed—more on that below—comes from places like America, the UK, and the EU. But if it’s done properly, regional laws can have international impact.

For example, two key proposals—Good Clothes, Fair Pay in the EU and the Fashion Act in New York state—would cover the entire supply chain of companies operating in their market. If a brand is selling in Spain, for instance, Good Clothes, Fair Pay would ensure garment workers in countries like Vietnam and Bangladesh would be covered by the law. “It [could] compel bigger companies to take responsibility for what’s happening with their global supply chain, not just in their own backyard anymore,” says Galvin.

The impact lies in implementation, and it’s important that people who will be impacted by new legislation are involved in the process.

But the impact lies in implementation, and it’s important that people who will be impacted by new legislation are involved in the process. “Everybody needs to know how to implement it, how the procedures work, and how to use this legislation to get better justice. We need a monitoring system and an evaluation system,” says Akter.

But don’t brands break the existing rules?

Unlike some other industries, there are very few laws or rules that specifically apply to fashion brands. But there are still rules out there to be broken. Numerous areas of legislation that fashion brands do have to comply with depending on the region—these can include laws focused on labour, environmental, animal welfare, misleading conduct, and so on.

You don’t have to look far to find a brand paying illegally low wages, being caught, and then continuing to do so, so would brands even care about new laws? Frank Zambrelli, Director of Fordham University’s Responsible Business Coalition, thinks they will.

Money makes the world go round—for good or bad. If doing better creates a financial incentive, then you’re more likely to do that because there’s just no good reason not to.

Frank Zambrelli – Director of Fordham University’s Responsible Business Coalition

“Money makes the world go round—for good or bad—and I think the financial communities have recognised the materiality of these issues,” he says. While reporting on supply chains or emissions didn’t used to have any financial implication, he says legally mandated disclosure with financial penalties attached could “very much impact the financial health of the company.”

“If doing better creates a financial incentive, then you’re more likely to do that because there’s just no good reason not to,” he says.

And it’s not just fines or penalties in the mix, it’s reputation too. Being fined or sanctioned is not a good look, just ask the brands being sued for greenwashing.

Types of legislation affecting brands

Laws that do or could apply to fashion can operate in different ways, explains Gordon Renouf, co-founder at Good On You. Analysing the laws currently being considered is easier when you group them into two categories, though sometimes proposals may involve elements of both.

1. Laws affecting what a brand can or must say

“Some laws require that brands disclose certain information, such as how they address the risk of modern slavery in their supply chain,” says Renouf. “Others regulate what they can say.” For example, many countries prohibit “misleading statements” and there are recent EU proposals to specifically ban some forms of greenwashing.

2. Laws impacting what a business can or must do

“Laws can prohibit businesses from engaging in the industry’s worst practices,” says Renouf. For example in the EU the REACH laws on hazardous chemicals prohibit the use of certain Azo dyes as they are associated with a risk of cancer. Customs laws in the US and other countries prohibit the import of goods made with forced labour. “Other laws require businesses to operate in a certain way. The proposed Fabric Act [see below] would require fashion brands to make sure their factories paid the US minimum wage and avoid piece rates unless they can be sure the minimum wage is met,” explains Renouf.

Happening now: legislation and legislative campaigns

Some of the legislation currently being proposed by policymakers and campaign organisations can help us understand what the future might look like for fashion brands.

Good Clothes, Fair Pay (EU)

The Good Clothes, Fair Pay campaign was launched to demand living wage legislation in the European Union for global garment workers. The proposed legislation would require brands to publicly disclose details like production site addresses, the number of workers at each site, and the weekly take-home wage of workers. Brands would be prohibited from practices such as paying suppliers later than 60 days after delivery and cancelling orders without notice, and they’d have to release information about suppliers upon request. If brands break the rules, they could be excluded from state aid and loans and their commodities could be seized.

The FABRIC Act (US)

The FABRIC Act in the US aims to enforce minimum wage standards and increase transparency. There is a grant available for brands who onshore production and offer fair pay, workers being paid per piece is prohibited if it works out as less than the minimum wage, and brands will be held jointly liable for wage violations—not just the factory.

Fashion Act (New York)

New York State Assembly Bill A8352—known as the Fashion Act—would require brands making $100 million or more in revenue to map a minimum of 50% of their supply chain and require sustainability claims to be verified. The penalty for breaking the law would be a fine of up to 2% of a brand’s global revenue.

Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition (EU)

The European Commission has proposed changes to the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive that would introduce much stricter requirements for a business to make “green” claims, and increase the number of claims that are strictly prohibited including unsupported vague or generic claims like “green” or “environmentally friendly”.

In April 2022, the French government introduced an Anti Waste for a Circular Economy decree. The specific rules included in the decree are consistent with the broader EU approach to sustainability claims. But unlike the various EU laws, the French decree applies to many companies trading in France from January 2023. Among other things, the decree:

• Bans the use of several marketing terms, including “environmentally friendly” and “biodegradable”
• Requires disclosure of the country where the material used in garments was woven and dyed (not just final assembly), disclosure of any harmful substances used, and a statement about microplastics for majority synthetic products
• Prescribes how brands can make claims about recycled content and recyclability

Also from January 2023, the French government requires brands to disclose comprehensive evidence to support any claims of “carbon neutrality”.

Extended Producer Responsibility laws (EU)

There are laws designed to tackle more specific environmental issues, too. Extended Producer Responsibility laws are already in place in countries like France and Sweden—making brands responsible for paying for the collection, sorting, and recycling of textiles. And a potential new set of EU rules could mean brands have to use certain percentages of recycled materials, or ditch materials which are hard to recycle.

Other new rules will affect fashion brands, too

More far reaching, a range of non-fashion specific laws could impact fashion nonetheless—asking big companies to disclose things like greenhouse gas emissions so we all have a better idea of what their true impact is. For example, the US is finally making moves to standardise emissions reporting with a new federal rule proposed in 2022, which would apply to publicly traded companies.

What a better regulated industry could look like

Brands being legally required to do better means a lot of work behind the scenes. Zambrelli explains that just like every department of a fashion brand now has its own budget and financial expectations, each department would have its own sustainability expectations, too.

While fashion executives might find themselves with a bigger workload, from a consumer viewpoint, some of the impacts would be completely invisible. For example, most people have probably never heard of triclosan but if you’re buying a mouthwash in the EU, you can be sure that it is only present at a concentration of 0.2% or less in order to protect aquatic life when it washes down the drain. It’s taken care of without the consumer having to ever even think about it. In an ideally regulated fashion industry, consumers wouldn’t need to become experts on polluting chemicals, greenhouse gases, or CO2E to make better choices. Someone behind the scenes would have addressed it already, as the law required.

In an ideally regulated fashion industry, consumers wouldn’t need to become experts on polluting chemicals, greenhouse gases, or CO2E to make better choices.

On the other hand, it’s likely that brands will be required to share some details and will want to shout about others. So, accurate information that consumers do want to know about could be much more easily available in a well-regulated industry.

“I think consumer labelling is coming in probably multiple forms. It’s gonna be nearly impossible to buy a shirt in 10 years and not fully understand what the implication of that shirt coming into the market had on the world,” says Zambrelli.

The role we all have to play

10 years is a long time in fashion. 10 years ago, the conversation around sustainable fashion was barely even in the mainstream, so in another 10 we could see a complete transformation, and legislation could have a lot to do with that.

“Legislation is very important for the protection of the workers, for safety, livelihoods, freedom of expression, freedom of movement, freedom of thought, freedom of association, collective bargaining, balanced lives, quality of life, education, food, health, recreation, social protection. It’s people’s lives,” says Akter.

Consumers are also citizens. And in many jurisdictions, the voices of citizens can make a real difference.

Getting to a point where all of those elements are considered to be as important as profit will take a lot of political will. New rules for fashion need to be rigorously and comprehensively designed to make this future possible. “Minimum effective regulation should ban unsustainable practices in line with community expectations and also require full transparency from brands on what’s in their products and how they are made,” says Renouf. “And it must create effective incentives for compliance.”

And it’s not just up to the politicians. Consumers are also citizens. And in many jurisdictions, the voices of citizens can make a real difference.

For example, the Good Clothes, Fair Pay campaign needs one million signatures from people with EU passports. Similarly, US legislation campaigns ask citizens to email their representatives and lend their voices to the cause.

Writing emails, making phone calls, asking brands to show public support for new laws, and all that old school activism can be incredibly powerful, as history has shown us in other ways. Newer approaches like sharing campaign materials on social media can influence hearts and minds, too. (Good On You’s app can help here—you can use it to send a message to your favourite brand asking them to lift their game including by supporting effective regulation.)

Citizens have power. We can all help call for legislation which, as Galvin puts it, “makes it easier to be a good brand and harder to be a bad brand.”

The post Fashion Regulation: Making Unsustainable Against the Law appeared first on Good On You.

The boom in fashion resale platforms

Resale is the new black. From luxury heavyweights to fast fashion giants, brands are increasingly capitalising on the growth in second hand. Ganni, Gucci, COS, Levi’s, Nike, Adidas, and Mara Hoffman are a few of the brands contributing to the 275% uplift in brand-owned resale shops.

Certainly, some brands—especially those with proven track records for pursuing more sustainable practices—are launching resale because it makes sense. But the fact that the global second hand apparel market is set to grow three times faster than the overall apparel market (16 times faster in the US) is undoubtedly a driver too.

Resale is the new black. From luxury heavyweights to fast fashion giants, brands are increasingly capitalising on the growth in second hand.

On surface level, resale seems like an obviously ethical move for any brand. And when paired with a shift in business model away from linear overconsumption, resale can help brands become more circular and emphasise degrowth principles. That’s all while opening up new revenue potential. In both ways, resale can be a win-win when certain brands get on board.

But what happens when brands with the worst reputations for overproducing polyester clothes destined for landfills get into resale? What happens when some of the most infamous fast fashion brands launch resale without addressing the underlying symptoms of the problem they’ve created? That’s where the ethical questions of a seemingly good move become trickier to answer.

The over-producing brands want a slice of the pie

They may appear to be unlikely participants given the linear, buy-sell-dispose nature of their business model, but a wave of fast fashion resale platforms are hitting the market.

In February, Pretty Little Thing (PLT) announced via UK creative director Molly-Mae Hague that it will launch resale in 2022. “It will be an app where girls can resell their PLT pieces and pretty much anything pre-loved,” Hague said at the time.

The following month, Boohoo Group, which owns PLT, announced it will be rolling out a resale platform for all of its brands—which include NastyGal, MissPap, boohooMAN, Warehouse, and Debenhams—by 2023. This is likely a move to win back the sales that its customers have started to take elsewhere. PLT was the fifth most listed brand on Depop in 2021, behind Topshop in the top spot, Zara in third, and ASOS in fourth. Boohoo came in seventh.

With the disheartening rise of ultra fast fashion, many people have come to expect low prices and constant variety, but they also care about the environmental footprint of their consumption choices.

Erin Wallace – VP of Integrated Marketing, thredUP.

“A factor that contributed to resale’s growth during the past several years is the mindset shift that has taken place among consumers,” says Erin Wallace, VP of Integrated Marketing, thredUP. “With the disheartening rise of ultra fast fashion, many people have come to expect low prices and constant variety, but they also care about the environmental footprint of their consumption choices.”

“Many shoppers are realising that thrift offers the same variety and value as fast fashion, without the waste,” Wallace tells me. She points out that the company’s 2022 Resale Report found that nearly two in three consumers believe their individual consumption habits have a significant impact on the planet.

Will it work when fast fashion gets in the game?

While Boohoo’s plans will be revealed later this year, it is known that PLT’s offering will be app-based and designed to sync with users’ purchase history so that previous purchases can be easily listed for sale.

The sync-up may sound pretty useful and timesaving, However it may mean that there is a limit to which items users can sell. That’s not necessarily unusual. On Mara Hoffman’s Full Circle marketplace, for instance, only items purchased from 2019 onwards can be sold while further capacity is developed. However, given that Boohoo Group shipped over 62m orders in the financial year 2021/22 alone, it will be imperative to spread the service as far as possible in order to keep such high volumes of clothing in active circulation.

Also up for discussion is whether the new crop of resale platforms will offer cash—in the vein of Depop and Vestiaire Collective—or store credit. When brands offer it as the only option, store credit in return for resold fast fashion products handcuffs circularity to consumption.

When brands offer it as the only option, store credit in return for resold fast fashion products handcuffs circularity to consumption.

So far, existing own-brand resale platforms are a mixed bag. COS offers cash minus 10% sales commission, Adidas offers “rewards”, and Levi’s offers store credit. Upon the PLT announcement, Hague noted, “it is great to make a little bit of money for our girls as well”, which hints at cash, but doesn’t offer a concrete answer. We did reach out to PLT, but they declined to take part in an interview. Boohoo Group also did not respond to interview requests.

For its reGAIN recycling program, PLT currently offers discounts to shoppers who drop clothes off at recycling points or charity shops to “ prevent the unnecessary pile up of discarded clothing in landfills”. That’s despite the fact that “recycled” clothes and charity shop donations still end up in landfills or being incinerated.

The test: are brands reducing total production?

For fast fashion resale to really “disrupt the fashion industry”, as Hague said it will, it must displace production in a substantive way. Most of fashion’s emissions are generated in the production stage, so if you reduce production in favour of reselling what already exists, you reduce a great deal of fashion’s overall impact. When Hugo Boss announced it would be launching a resale platform in the third quarter of 2022, it stated that “buying second hand saves an average of 44% of CO2 emissions compared to buying new”.

Reducing production as a path towards degrowth can happen and it can be a success, albeit so far only on the luxury level. British brand Toast is set to produce 20% fewer styles than in previous seasons, while Ralph Lauren has been trying out “financial growth through degrowth of resources”, making less product but more money.

“Overproduction is a massive issue within the fashion industry,” says Wallace. “[Our report] found that second hand has displaced 1bn new clothing purchases in 2021 that would have been purchased new. The more people make the switch to second hand, the less demand there will be for new clothing.”

This is a sensible conclusion to draw for platforms like thredUP that are not contributing to the demand for new clothing. But when it comes to brand owned resale platforms, we’re not yet seeing much evidence of brands slowing down production accordingly.

One brand which plans to do just that, however, is Another Tomorrow. Resale had been on cards for the New York-based brand since it launched in January 2020, and the time was right in April 2022.

“The language I’ve started to use is treating clothing as an asset again. I think when you start to think about clothing as an asset, you start to think ‘how do you care for and service that asset’, and resale is a part of that,” says founder and CEO Vanessa Barboni Hallik. “It’s really our hope that these resale businesses do supplant the need to continuously make new products.”

When it comes to fast fashion, layering resale into the product offering is just lip service when it’s not paired with a meaningful commitment to change.

Erin Wallace – VP of Integrated Marketing, thredUP

In terms of reaching an equilibrium which allows the offsetting of production with resale, Hallik says it’s difficult to model how much product customers will sell via Another Tomorrow’s authenticated resale service, but that it could take a couple of years. The plan is, at least, in motion for Another Tomorrow, but is it possible that fast fashion brands could, or would, follow suit?

Wallace is clear about what the answer should be. “When it comes to fast fashion, layering resale into the product offering is just lip service when it’s not paired with a meaningful commitment to change,” she says. “To tackle the fashion industry’s waste problem, we need to create solutions that impact both overproduction and underutilisation.”

Resale models require quality and longevity

Overproduction isn’t the only issue that resale could address. Quality and longevity are in the mix too because if brands want to enter the resale market, they need to be sure that their clothes will hold up.

As a luxury brand with quality at its core, Hallik says there is a conflict involved with resale. “We’re putting product out into the world that we completely intend to be timeless and have longevity and be held onto, so it’s a bit strange to say, ‘give it back!’” she says.

“However, as a system-wide approach, I hope it’s an incentive for companies to make higher quality products. Because if it falls apart, there’s no second bite of the apple. My hope for fast fashion is that they recognise that resale can be quite profitable if they make products that can stand the test of time.”

Material recapture, redesign, recycling, and other end of life services must make up part of a wider strategy—otherwise it becomes the consumers’ sole responsibility.

Of course, even the most high-quality clothes are subject to tears, moths, and other misfortunes, so it’s also vital that resale isn’t a one-note stab at circularity. Material recapture, redesign, recycling, and other end of life services must make up part of a wider strategy—otherwise it becomes the consumers’ sole responsibility to distribute their waste, and local access to solutions other than landfill are few and far between.

If fast fashion brands did all that, it’d mean dismantling the entire business model—and if you ask sustainability experts, that’s arguably the most sustainable move those brands could make.

What’s the verdict: circular or cynical?

Without reducing production or prioritising quality and longevity, fast fashion’s foray into resale will be, in many ways, a mere cash grab.

However, that such brands are clamouring to join in shows just how normalised second hand has become. And that could be instrumental in shifting consumer mindsets. In addition, the strides made in the industry in recent years, while still not nearly robust enough, have been significant. They demonstrate the dual power of consumer pressure and system change, and if the momentum continues it can be applied to resale, too.

It will remain important for consumers to look for meaningful action and have high expectations for true circularity and a slowing down of production. “At least they’re doing something”, isn’t necessarily a helpful position when we’re up against a tight time limit for our climate.

But citizens and consumers can use this moment as both a positive progression and a launchpad for more. “If fast fashion brands can commit to offsetting their production through resale, and creating clothes that last,” Wallace says, “we will all be better off.”

The post Fast Fashion Brands Launching Resale Platforms: Circular or Cynical? appeared first on Good On You.

What are science based targets?

If you’re the sort of person who scours brands’ websites for environmental commitments or reads annual sustainability reports, there’s a good chance you’ve come across the term science based targets (SBTs) lately. While “science based” sounds great—science!—you might have some questions.

It’s understandable if you’re a little sceptical about sustainability buzzwords these days. And on first glance, SBTs may seem like one more addition to fashion’s alphabet soup of sustainability jargon and buzzwords.

Are SBTs really that different from the vague targets brands often set? Let’s investigate.

The Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi), which defines and facilitates SBTs, describes them as providing “companies with a clearly-defined path to reduce emissions in line with the Paris Agreement goals.” It’s a description that answers some questions but poses many more.

Answering those questions might help us, as consumers and citizens, hold brands to their commitments and inform our climate activism. That’s a good reason to dig into the specifics.

Paris: fashion capital, climate capital

Understanding SBTs starts with understanding the Paris Agreement. The legally binding agreement was adopted at COP21 in Paris in 2015. It sets a goal of limiting global warming to “well below 2, preferably 1.5 degrees Celsius, compared to pre-industrial levels”. (“Pre-industrial” is a loosely defined term that bodies such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, class as around 1850-1900).

The agreement came into effect when at least 55 countries representing 55% of global emissions had joined, and the goal was to achieve a “climate neutral world by mid-century”. It was up to different countries to decide how they would work towards the goal, but it could include a host of actions and measures such as investing in renewable energy, taxing polluters, and improving “green” public transport.

Because of Paris’ symbolic meaning in both the climate justice movement and within fashion, protestors have increasingly staged demonstrations at fashion week events—including the famous scene of an activist crashing a runway in 2021—to make statements about fashion’s impact on the planet. This highlights the increasing concern many people have regarding the fashion industry’s links to climate change and the inaction from the biggest brands.

Protester disrupting tonight’s Louis Vuitton show pic.twitter.com/hP8dry4kkz

— jessica testa (@jtes) October 5, 2021

What do science based targets have to do with fashion?

A global goal needs global collaboration, and if private companies like fashion brands decide to carry on as normal, they derail other efforts.

To create the clothes we wear, the fashion industry consistently engages in actions that have an adverse effect on our environment. Shipping, farming, plastic production, coal-fuelled factories, livestock, logging, synthetic textile production, dyeing, mining, and landfilling all sit within fashion’s remit, each with its own impact.

To limit warming to 1.5 degrees, the fashion industry needs to reduce its GHG emissions.

Such resource use, production, and waste take their toll. And there are many estimates about what the industry’s impact is. Consulting firm McKinsey estimated that the fashion industry was responsible for 2.1 billion metric tonnes of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in 2018. That’s 4% of the global total and the equivalent to the emissions of France, Germany, and the UK combined. The UN has previously estimated that fashion is responsible for 8-10% of GHG emissions. Whatever the precise number, it’s a significant one.

To limit warming to 1.5 degrees, the fashion industry needs to reduce its GHG emissions. But how do brands know they’re reducing them enough to keep us within that safe level? And how do we know that brands are making meaningful environmental promises? That’s where SBTs come in.

How are science based targets different?

There are tonnes of sustainability targets flying around, you can’t miss them, and they’re often fodder for greenwashing: internally set, unverified, and vague. Are SBTs different?

For a target to be considered science based it must be in line with the goal of limiting warming to well below 2 degrees, with efforts shown to limit it to 1.5. A brand must register with the SBTi, develop a target, and then submit it so the SBTi can validate whether it is in fact science based.

SBTi represents the “current gold standard” in this space, says Kristian Hardiman, Good On You’s head of ratings. It’s because of this specificity, scientific grounding, and validation that Good On You rewards a “higher proportion of points to brands setting SBTs when analysing GHG emissions,” Hardiman says of Good On You’s brand rating methodology.

Many activists, academics, organisers, and researchers agree that SBTs represent the best standard we currently have. It’s what all brands should be targeting, regardless of their size.

“It’s really important that we try to align all business—and life in general on our planet—with the 1.5 degree pathway,” says Rebecca Coughlan, transparency manager at non-profit advocacy organisation Remake.

Why? Because according to an alarming IPCC report released in February 2022, “any further delay in concerted anticipatory global action on adaptation and mitigation will miss a brief and rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all”.

IPCC followed this with a report in April 2022 that The Guardian described as “what is in effect their final warning”. The co-chair of the working group behind the report is quoted as saying “it’s now or never, if we want to limit global warming to 1.5C. Without immediate and deep emissions reductions across all sectors, it will be impossible.”

Unfortunately, fashion brands are not doing enough. Around COP26, I worked with Good On You analysts to produce this deep-dive survey on what actions brands are taking for the climate. Based on newly released data on 2,500 brands’ environmental track records, the report found that brands aren’t doing enough to address their impacts on the climate emergency. For example, only 10% of brands analysed earned Good On You’s top score for the environment. And where the biggest and wealthiest brands have GHG targets, 69% of them are not disclosing whether they are even on track to meet them.

This all imbues the conversation about SBTs with a heightened sense of urgency. “SBTs show companies how much they need to reduce [their emissions] by and give them a good timeline to be able to align with that pathway so we can hopefully avoid the worst effects of climate change,” says Coughlan. At the very least, that’s where brands need to start if the fashion industry is to mitigate its role in the climate emergency.

How can brands reduce their emissions?

Allbirds—a footwear brand currently scoring “It’s a Start” in Good On You’s rating system—made 10 commitments when introducing its SBT “Flight Plan” in 2021, says Hana Kajimura, head of sustainability. (There are a variety of factors that explain Allbird’s score beyond its GHG targets.)

These commitments include 100% of wool coming from regenerative sources, sourcing 100% renewable energy for facilities that are owned and operated by the brand, reducing the use of raw materials by 25%, and doubling the lifetime of footwear and apparel products. Each commitment is to be achieved by 2025 to help accelerate a longer-term target to be as close to zero emissions as possible by 2030.

Other emissions-reducing activities that brands can undertake include things like moving away from fabrics derived from fossil fuels, installing solar panels on factory rooftops, producing fewer products, and reselling existing products.

What are scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions?

One key problem with many fashion brands’ targets is that they don’t account for the full impact of the supply chain. Often, brands might focus on reducing emissions in one area of their operation, which can verge into greenwashing territory if they’re only focused on the parts of their operations that already have the least impact.

This is where it’s helpful to understand what scopes mean. “Scopes are a way to delineate between direct and indirect emissions,” Hardiman explains. In other words, it’s about how a company goes about accounting for its greenhouse gas impacts. “You calculate your emissions and then within each scope, you determine the best way to reduce emissions.”

There are three types of scopes. And while they cover the complexity of the supply chain, their definitions are quite straightforward: scope 1 emissions come from sources owned or controlled by the brand—think retail shops and corporate headquarters. Scope 2 emissions come from purchased electricity, steam, heating, and cooling, for a brand’s own use. And scope 3 emissions come from other sources that are not technically controlled by a brand such as transportation, extraction of materials, non-owned supplier factories, employee travel, and the use of products that have already been sold.

When it comes to where the biggest impacts lie, it’s different scopes for different industries. “For most fashion companies, scope 3 is usually huge whilst scope 1 and scope 2 are relatively small,” Hardiman says. “But for some companies outside fashion, such as airlines, their scope 1—their direct operation—will be enormous.”

Absolute v intensity targets—what’s the gist?

Along with the different scopes, there are different types of reduction targets, too: absolute and intensity. With absolute reduction targets, brands are targeting an overall reduction of emissions compared to a certain point in time. So, a brand may say, “We’ll reduce our emissions by 35% by 2035 compared to 2005 levels”. An intensity reduction is when a brand targets reducing emissions per unit. And intensity targets can be both physical (ie per garment made) or economic (ie in relation to profit).

Where does the SBTi stand on these details? Although, as Coughlin notes, scope 3 is where the majority of fashion’s impact lies, the SBTi only requires scope 3 targets if the associated emissions are “40% or more of total scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions”.

In terms of reductions, brands can choose between absolute and intensity reduction targets. However, it is worth noting that there are currently no approved examples of physical intensity targets, ie a brand saying it will reduce emissions by 20% per garment made.

Better targets aren’t a substitute for regulation

Of course, not all experts agree with the current framework set out for SBTs, such as allowing intensity reductions. “[Physical intensity reductions are] hugely problematic because the climate doesn’t care if you have more efficient production if you increase volumes overall,” says Nusa Urbancic, campaigns director at Changing Markets Foundation, which recently launched a campaign against greenwashing in fashion.

Ultimately, this all points to the urgent need for legislation—for governments to mandate the actions the industry won’t take on its own.

“[The SBTi] needs to strengthen transparency, how much it covers supply chain emissions, and what’s in scope,” says Urbancic. “They also need to do really rigorous reporting every year or two years on where these companies are with regards to achieving their targets. It’s currently enough for brands to say, ‘oh sorry, we didn’t manage it’. So, then what? Nothing. There are no consequences.”

Ultimately, this all points to the urgent need for legislation—for governments to mandate the actions the industry won’t take on its own. Most experts agree that it’s long overdue for governments to step in and mandate things like greenhouse gas emissions reporting. And most experts agree that we need regulation to achieve the kind of systems-level change that needs to happen to address the fashion industry’s impacts.

The pros in an unregulated industry

Today, in an unregulated industry that largely plays by its own rules, SBTs provide brands with a firm roadmap for “how much and how quickly they need to reduce their GHG emissions”. Verified and climate-focused, SBTs are focused on creating a safe, liveable future while other targets may sound impressive but could have little to no impact overall.

A late 2021 report by Good On You found that only 6% of large brands have science based GHG emissions targets. But if SBTs become an industry standard, we could see a shift towards more meaningful, measured climate action.

There are undoubtedly many areas for improvement regarding reporting, incentives, and penalties but perhaps Kajimura puts it best: “Given the current trajectory, we simply don’t have time to wait for perfect solutions. Instead, we have an opportunity to innovate.”

The post Can Science Based Targets Help Tackle Greenwashing? We Investigate appeared first on Good On You.