FASHION REVOLUTION | FASHION TRANSPARENCY INDEX 2018
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5. SPOTLIGHT ISSUES IMPLICATIONS Topshop continues to be the only brand that requires its suppliers to sign a 'Right to Organise Guarantee’ which is intended to ensure that workers’ Freedom of Association rights are clearly communicated and understood by all workers. This is disappointing. We would like to see more transparency from brands and retailers on their efforts to support freedom of association and put systems into place to enable collective bargaining.
Waste — (SDG12) Over a quarter of brands and retailers (27% or 40 brands in total) are offering clothing take-back schemes or instore clothing recycling in order to help consumers recycle unwanted clothes instead of send them to landfill. Less than 20% of brands and retailers disclose what happens to pre-consumer surplus and waste materials (e.g. excess and defective product runs, textile offcuts, surplus and dead stock materials) and postproduction surplus and waste clothing and materials (e.g. production samples, unsold clothing and defective stock). Only nine brands (6%) advertise repair services in order to help extend the life of their products. However, in more positive news, a quarter of the brands and retailers are disclosing investments in circular, closed-loop resources and technologies with the aim to reduce resource consumption and increase resource efficiency — up from 14% last year.
It can take 2,700 litres to produce the cotton needed to make a single t-shirt.
95% of the clothes North Americans throw away into landfills each year could be reused or recycled
[source: WWF]
[source: Value Village]
The carbon emissions generated by the clothing of the average household in the UK is equivalent to driving 6,000 miles in a car
It is estimated that 150 billion items of clothing are delivered out of factories annually worldwide — that’s 20 new items of clothing for every person on the planet
[source: WRAP]
[source: Materials Systems Laboratory, MIT]