Fast fashion famously struggles with unsustainable practices in its supply chain. From procurement through to manufacturing and distribution, unsustainable practices riddle the fashion industry supply chain.
While this is widely known, many major clothing brands can’t (or won’t) counteract this trend because their supply chains lack transparency.
The true cost of fast fashion
The fashion industry’s sourcing practices are notoriously damaging to the climate. The fashion industry produces approximately 2-3% annual carbon emissions worldwide. That’s in the same ballpark as commercial aviation (2-3%) and data centres (2.5% to 3.7%).
Of course, measuring the environmental cost of the fashion industry solely using carbon emissions is reductive at best.
Textile industry expert Lutz Walter explains that “desertification, biodiversity, agricultural land degradation or poverty of farming communities in cotton growing countries,” as well as “pollution from textile dyeing or poor pay and labour conditions in garment factories in developing countries,” are much more immediate and costly consequences of wanton waste, pollution, and unsustainable practices in the fashion supply chain.
Fashion supply chains still run on unsustainable materials
One of the most common methods suggested for reforming fashion supply chains is the industry-wide shift towards more environmentally friendly material manufacturing. Specifics range from more sustainable ways to produce environmentally harmful materials like denim, to reclaiming and recycling old garments.
The industry is making progress. However, over the coming decade, this progress is unlikely to amount to more than a drop in the ocean compared to the fast fashion industry’s insatiable appetite for material made and processed as cheaply as possible.
According to a 2023 report by the Textile Exchange, so-called “preferred materials” like organic cotton and recycled fabric accounted for approximately 23 million tonnes in 2021, representing 19% of global production. By 2030, recycled fashion will amount to 30 million tonnes per year.
However, the total demand for fashion items is expected to grow just as fast (if not faster) than recycling efforts. As such, the proportion of global fashion production derived from “preferred materials” isn’t expected to get any higher than 19%.
“In the face of the climate crisis, the policy landscape, and investor and consumer scrutiny, fashion and apparel brands cannot afford to underinvest in their raw materials strategies any longer,” argues Beth Jensen, director of climate and impact at the Textile Exchange.
Transparency in the fashion supply chain
Fashion companies traditionally have purposely not looked too closely at their supply chains, where environmental and human rights violations have flourished, in order to keep prices low. Now, however, the tide seems to be turning.
Recently, investors in Inditex (the parent company of fashion brand Zara) loudly pushed for the company to make its full list of suppliers public so they can better assess any supply chain risks. Inditex, Reuters reports, is one of the last major holdouts among large fashion manufacturers to not publish the names and locations of its sourcing partners’ factories.
However, Inditex has refused to increase the transparency in its supply chain, despite Know The Chain, a benchmarking initiative for organisations to address forced labour in supply chains, giving Inditex a lower overall score in its 2023 assessment than it received in 2021.
Forcing companies to make sustainable decisions regarding the environmental and human impact of their supply chains is an ongoing battle. Recently, landmark legislation in the European Union which would hold corporations accountable for environmental damage and labour abuses in their supply chains has met fierce resistance.
However, legislation in France also recently proposed a ban on fast fashion advertising, French Minister of Ecological Transition, Christophe Béchu, commenting: “Ultra fast fashion is an ecological disaster: clothes are poorly made, widely purchased, rarely worn and quickly thrown away.”
Nevertheless, regulatory changes are moving much, much slower than the fashion industry can churn out over 20 million tonnes of clothes per year.
A blockchain for cotton
Some believe technology (combined with restructured business practices and regulation) could be the answer to creating much needed transparency in the fashion supply chain.
“With the regulatory landscape, with more transparency and traceability, [brands] won’t have a choice but to prove that what they’ve been saying is happening on the farm is actually happening on the farm,” Crispin Argento, co-founder and managing director of blockchain procurement startup Sourcery, in an interview with Vogue Business. Without intervention, he adds, the global cotton supply chain will collapse. “If we continue with the same practices, in another 20 to 25 years, farmers will stop growing cotton.”
Sourcery’s model aims to create transparency starting at the agricultural stage. They then maintain this transparency throughout the process from farm to sales rack. First, they record and verify data at the farming level. Their app then measures how sustainably the farmers grew the crop accordind to their standards. Blockchain technology then links that data to the crop throughout the supply chain. Manufacturers and fashion brands that want to access that data in order to secure their climate conscious bonafides then pay the farmers (and Sourcery) for that verifiable data. The more sustainable the crop, the more money suppliers, manufacturers and brands kick back down the supply chain to the farmers.
If regulation can create the necessary need for transparency, blockchain technology like the kind created by Sourcery could be the answer to changing the way the fashion industry approaches its supply chain.
- Digital Supply Chain
- Sustainability
