Analysis: Fashion Industry Efforts to Verify Sustainability Make ‘Greenwashing’ Easier

Environmental certification applications that declare to confirm the sustainability of style manufacturers truly facilitate “greenwashing” for the attire business, based on a latest report by environmental advocacy group Altering Markets Basis. 

The group, which was based in 2015 and relies within the Netherlands, seeks to drive change towards a extra sustainable economic system by exposing what it feels are irresponsible company practices. Its evaluation of voluntary efforts designed  to cut back style’s rising environmental footprint discovered the applications led to elevated air pollution as an alternative, and are serving to to cement the business’s reliance on fossil fuels.

“Waste will increase, utilization of garments decreases, and reliance on fossil fuels will increase,” stated George Harding-Rolls, a marketing campaign supervisor at Altering Markets and lead writer of the report. “But, these schemes live on and say that sustainable style is simply across the nook. That is truly stopping us from taking the extra systemic motion that we want, comparable to extra regulation and laws.”

Attire retailers didn’t reply to requests for remark from Inside Local weather Information. Organizations working sustainable style certification applications glossed over most of the points within the report, together with the rising use of polymer or plastic fibers utilized in attire. As a substitute, they centered on efforts to cut back plastics utilized in packaging and shows. 

Trend retailers “are lauded for working in direction of the discount of plastic hangers, luggage and different packaging, whereas their enormous and rising use of plastic for garments passes underneath the radar,” the report said. 

The March 24 report evaluated 10 of essentially the most distinguished sustainability certification applications for the style business, a quickly rising sector that produces greater than 100 billion clothes annually and accounts for anyplace between 2 to eight % of worldwide greenhouse gasoline emissions.

The Altering Markets evaluation centered on the sustainability applications that declare to handle problems with overproduction, together with the rise of “quick style”—cheap clothes designed to maintain up with quickly altering style traits. It additionally addressed finish of life administration and using fossil fuels and poisonous chemical compounds in manufacturing and manufacturing.   

At finest, the certification applications supplied a “patchy promise of sustainability,” centered on a small part of the availability chain, the report concluded.  At worst, the report discovered the certification applications, which are sometimes funded by the manufacturers that they consider, are “unambitious, opaque, unaccountable and compromised.”

For instance, one such program, the New Plastics Economic system initiative of the U.Ok.-based Ellen MacArthur Basis, calls on member firms together with Walmart to decide to lowering plastic packaging, however not the plastic, or artificial, fibers utilized in garments. The report famous that textiles, which more and more depend on artificial supplies like polyester, are the second-largest marketplace for plastics after packaging. Ignoring using these artificial fibers is a significant oversight, the report concluded. 

The group added that its style initiatives have labored carefully with specialists from academia, authorities and business to drive momentum in direction of a round economic system for style that eliminates waste.

One of many largest applications included within the evaluation is run by the Sustainable Attire Coalition (SAC), which payments itself because the “main alliance for sustainable manufacturing” for the attire, footwear and textile business.  The coalition counts greater than 250 manufacturers, retailers, producers, tutorial establishments, governments and NGOs amongst its members.  

Altering Markets discovered that the Coalition’s “Higg Index” scored among the many lowest of the ten sustainability applications that it evaluated and didn’t adequately tackle points associated to fossil-fuel feedstocks for attire, overproduction pushed by quick style and the discharge of microfibers or microplastics from clothes into the setting.  The report additionally gave the Higg Index low scores on independence, efficiency and the way it drives enchancment on sustainability.

The Sustainable Attire Coalition declined an interview request however issued a written assertion, saying “the Sustainable Attire Coalition permits organisations to entry trusted, credible and scientifically rigorous instruments and help to measure the impression of product manufacturing. This supplies a foundation for monitoring change, informing and empowering manufacturers to progress on a steady journey of enchancment.

“We work in lively partnership with many others within the sector to advocate for better transparency and substantiation of claims,” the coalition wrote.

The report, nonetheless, said that the Sustainable Attire Coalition’s paid membership mannequin supplies members the chance to take a seat on the group’s Board of Administrators and vote on key choices, giving member firms the power to pursue their very own agendas, which can run counter to coalition’s said sustainability targets. 

For instance, the report recommended that Nike, one of many greatest customers of artificial fibers within the attire sector, might have used its affect as one of many Sustainable Attire Coalition’s founding firms to downplay the environmental impression of artificial fibers. The report recommended that the coalition’s Higg Index, the unique model of which was developed by Nike, might not account for the environmental impression of fossil-fuel extraction, together with oil extraction used to create artificial fibers.  

“As a result of truth the SAC was based by quite a few manufacturers and retailers, these organisations comparable to Patagonia, Walmart, Nike, Goal, Hole, H&M Group and Marks & Spencer proceed to have a big presence throughout the coalition,” the report said. “That is particularly the case for Nike, which initially contributed its personal MSI [Materials Sustainability Index] to create the [Higg] Index. 

Nike didn’t reply to a request for remark. 

SAC denied any outsized affect of Nike or different firms over its actions.  “It’s deceptive and inaccurate to recommend that one member can unduly affect both the strategic focus or the instrument improvement of the Sustainable Attire Coalition,” the group wrote. “The Higg Index is a set of 5 instruments. Nike was concerned with an early improvement of simply one among these instruments, the Higg MSI [Materials Sustainability Index], earlier than gifting it to SAC in 2013. The Higg MSI went by way of a major overhaul in 2016, with adjustments being accredited by over 100 voting members. Nike shouldn’t be a present Board member and hasn’t been for greater than 5 years.”

One certification program, which was not talked about within the Altering Markets report, has set its sights on driving measurable change in greenhouse gasoline emissions reductions the place it issues most, the manufacturing provide chains of attire manufacturers.

The factories, mills and different industrial services that produce the uncooked supplies, fibers, and completed attire offered by main style manufacturers account for the overwhelming majority of the business’s greenhouse gasoline emissions. Lots of the third-party firms that produce these items accomplish that in China, the world’s largest textile-exporting nation.

The Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, China’s largest environmental group, launched a report in October that ranks the sustainability of style manufacturers with a robust deal with the greenhouse gasoline emissions from mills and factories throughout China.

“We deal with [the] provide chain like a laser,” stated Linda Greer, a senior international fellow with the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs. “We do this, to start with, as a result of for a lot of sectors together with the attire sector, that’s the place possibly 80 % of the emissions lie. After which additionally we deal with [the] provide chain as a result of we’re a Chinese language NGO and so a lot of our factories are manufacturing for export.”

IPE’s Company Local weather Motion Transparency Index scores manufacturers from 0 to 100 based mostly on their efficiency in addressing local weather change. Factors are awarded based on company local weather insurance policies, monitoring and disclosure of emissions, emission discount targets and, most closely weighted, direct motion that firms are taking in China to cut back greenhouse gasoline emissions throughout their provide chains. Nevertheless, not like the Altering Markets report, IPE’s index doesn’t take into account overproduction associated to quick style. 

“The way in which that we differ from numerous the opposite indices is that we’re actually trying to observe the kilos of emissions,” Greer stated.  “You possibly can’t get an excellent grade except you’re engaged on [the] provide chain and never simply in governance and different issues.”

IPE’s index obtained a significant increase in February when China required most of the nation’s largest polluters to publicly disclose their carbon emissions for the primary time. Particulars of latest regulation, together with precisely which firms are required to report their emissions, are nonetheless being labored out, however Greer stated she estimates it can apply to 80,000 factories, an incredible enhance from the restricted variety of producers who’ve voluntarily reported their emissions up to now.  

The brand new regulation comes because the U.S. Securities and Alternate Fee is proposing the same regulation for publicly traded firms. The pending U.S. disclosure necessities come as Europe is weighing laws that will goal the low-cost, disposable attire that fuels quick style. On March 30, the European Fee launched its proposed Technique for Sustainable and Round Textiles that seeks to make sure that attire offered within the EU is long-lived, recyclable and, to the extent doable, comprised of recycled fibers.  

On the similar time, a invoice was launched earlier this yr in New York state that will require massive style manufacturers to reveal a minimum of some greenhouse gasoline emissions, in addition to water and chemical use, from their provide chains.

Harding-Rolls of Altering Markets stated the pending laws mark a turning level for the style business.

“I believe we’re actually seeing the loss of life throes of voluntary sustainability within the style sector,” he stated. “We’ve been experimenting with the sector self-regulating for the final 20 to 30 years and what we’ve seen is that the environmental impression of the sector obtained a lot worse. There’s a stick and never only a carrot to sustainable style now. The subsequent two or three years will likely be actually important to see how that performs out.”