FASHION REVOLUTION | FASHION TRANSPARENCY INDEX 2022
Similarly, during COP26 in November last year, the UNFCCC Fashion Charter for Climate Action proposed renewed commitments to achieve net-zero emissions. However, missing from the conversation was the question of growth, both in terms of profits and production volumes. We cannot have a meaningful discussion on carbon reduction without addressing overproduction and overconsumption as a vital part of reducing climate impact. We live on a finite planet with limited resources and the fashion industry is expanding; global consumption is projected to increase by 63% by 2030. Whilst it is encouraging to see that from 2020 to 2022, 15 more brands are disclosing their annual production volumes, progress is too slow. Brands must be held financially responsible for the cost of cleaning up the environment and the poor health outcomes they contribute to. Brands’ transparency on their actions to address clothing waste should not be reserved for when they are held legally accountable. It is encouraging that some major brands and retailers are taking accountability for their waste and following the principles of Extended Producer Responsibility
(EPR). However, continuing to churn out staggering volumes of clothing does little to reduce clothing waste. The OR Foundation recently shared how “waste weaponised the rain” in Kantomato Market in Accra, Ghana where drought, followed by flash flooding, pushed clothing waste, covered in human excrement, into people’s homes causing increased risk of illness. Clothing waste also made its way out to sea, impacting locals’ ability to fish, which is integral to their livelihoods. According to the Environmental Justice Foundation, Ghana’s fisheries are a significant contributor to the Ghanaian economy and coastal communities and are the main source of income for millions of people. This is what happens when overproduction meets the climate crisis; one makes the other worse, mutually reinforcing the dangerous impacts of inaction. It is important that the most vulnerable to and impacted by the industry’s overproduction and overconsumption issues are the least responsible for shouldering the burden. Any interventions designed to reduce and manage waste must be made in consultation with, and provide support to, impacted communities.
SPOTLIGHT ISSUES
To read more about this issue, see the viewpoint on page 100 from María Beatriz O'Brien, the country coordinator for Fashion Revolution Chile, and Desierto Vestido, an activist organisation operating in the city of Iquique where thousands of tonnes of clothing arrive each year at the Alto Hospicio free zone in northern Chile.
Very low transparency on the incineration of unsold goods. 12% of major brands disclose the quantity of items destroyed annually (up from 6% last year). Items may be destroyed by luxury brands as a way to retain exclusivity and value or simply because they have too many unsold goods, production samples they cannot sell or goods that don’t meet safety standards. New legislation in France, and proposed legislation in the EU, both prohibit the destruction of unsold goods and imposes a transparency obligation. Next year, we hope to see more transparency on the incineration of unsold goods in response to these new and incoming legislations.
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Major brands and retailers disclose more information on the circular solutions they are developing than the actual volumes of waste they produce. Another crucial way to tackle textile and clothing waste is by investing in efforts to slow consumption and increase clothing longevity, which would have a significant positive impact on the environment. We found that 21% of major brands describe the implementation of new business models, such as renting and reselling (up from 14% in 2021) and 20% offer repair services, which would enable their customers to keep clothes in use for longer. A growing number of major brands explain how they’re developing circular solutions that enable textile-to-textile recycling – 28% of brands in 2022, up from 18% in 2020. However, only 4% of brands publish the percentage of their products designed to enable circularity – which allows for the raw materials in disused clothes to be transformed into raw materials for new clothes.