Hosted in the Royal Opera House, Copenhagen, on June 07-08, 2022, the Copenhagen Fashion Summit urged over 900 leaders from brands, retailers, NGOs, policy, manufacturers, and innovators to drive urgent action. The Summit dwelt on the theme titled ‘Alliances for a New Era’.

The event encouraged pre-competitive collaboration between industry leaders, besides examining atypical cross-industry alliances to accelerate the transition to a net positive industry.

The event program focused on topics ranging from ‘What even is a sustainable brand?’ to ‘subverting fashion’s historical exclusion’, to ‘supercharged storytelling’ to the ‘metaverse impact and decentralized futures.’ Many companies and organizations announced sustainability measures including the GFA Monitor launched by GFA to guide fashion leaders towards a net positive fashion industry.

GFA also launched of the Global Circular Fashion Forum (GCFF), a global initiative supported by GIZ, to spur local action in textile manufacturing countries to accelerate and scale recycling of post-industrial textile waste. The forum will convene stakeholders across various circularity programs and regions, sharing knowledge and building upon best practices to achieve a long-term, scalable, and just transition to a circular fashion industry.

Apparel Impact Institute launched a $250M Fashion Climate Fund led by Lululemon, H&M Group, H&M Foundation, and The Schmidt Family Foundation. The fund will help decarbonize and modernize fashion industry supply chains.

Fashion Revolution highlighted its new ‘Good Clothes, Fair Pay’ campaign which calls for legislation on living wages across the garment sector. This year-long campaign will be the single biggest EU campaign on living wages to date, requiring 1 million signatures from EU citizens.

This year’s Summit also presented an Innovation Forum, enabling small and large companies to meet with 24 sustainable solution providers – equipping them with the tools to turn words into meaningful actions. More than 300 facilitated business meetings between fashion companies

Global leader in denim authenticity and sustainable innovation for more than 130 years, Cone Denim has partnered with Regenagri®, an international regenerative agriculture initiative to help organizations reach new levels of sustainability by incorporating regenerative cotton in its premium denim styles.

As per a Textile World report, through this initiative, Cone Denim aims to increase access to sustainably sourced cotton grown using regenerative agricultural practices while also working on various programs to help its customers and brands achieve key sustainability actions.

Cone Denim advocates regenerative agriculture as a more sustainable approach to farming and way to minimize apparel’s global footprint. By working with nature, these practices help improve soil health by restoring the soil’s organic carbon. Regenerative practices include no-till agriculture, use of cover crops, diverse crop rotations, in addition to reduced use of fertilizer or pesticides. Cone supports Regenagri® initiatives that support organizations transitioning to holistic farming, including prioritization of increasing soil health and biodiversity, reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and sequestering CO2.

Based in the United States, textile manufacturer Standard Textile has been selected as the Best Managed Company in 2022 by a program sponsored by Deloitte Private and The Wall Street Journal.

The program recognizes outstanding US private companies and the achievements of their management teams.

The 2022 designees are US private companies that have demonstrated excellence in strategic planning and execution, a commitment to their people, and fostering a dynamic, resilient culture, as well as strong financials.

The program says this year’s designees continued to propel their businesses forward by prioritizing purpose, investing in their workforces, and demonstrating their commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion.

This is the second consecutive year that Standard Textile has received the Best Managed Company distinction.

Throughout the pandemic, Standard Textile has continued to put a strong focus on its purpose to inspire care, comfort and change in communities. In 2021, the company met its goal of supporting 80,000 showers by year-end through Standard Textile Cares, its national program to combat homelessness.

Standard Textile partnered with nonprofit organizations across the United States that provide mobile shower services to people dealing with homelessness or insufficient housing, donating thousands of bath towels, washcloths, shower curtains and blankets to support an estimated 80,200 showers annually.

As per a report by the nonprofit financial organization Planet Tracker in June 2022, only 11 percent of brands published their raw materials suppliers in 2022. The overall brand traceability score was just 19 percent in 2021. Planet Tracker worked with Segura, a digital supply chain company, to evaluate the financial risks and opportunities inherent in supply chain traceability. Common opportunities to curb impact include reducing air freight, consolidating suppliers and reducing production.

Titled “Lifting the Rug, the report outlines fashion’s business case for supply chain traceability against a number of environmental and human rights malpractices. The nonprofit also recently published a report evaluating the financial risks of business-as-usual in big plastics, especially relevant given incoming legislation.

In Planet Tracker’s analysis of 52 publicly listed retail companies, 19 companies or 37 per cent published a supplier list, and of those only 11 companies or 21 per cent had published any suppliers beyond Tier I. Supply chain traceability approaches from Patagonia, LVMH, etc were documented in the report.

The report showcases the degree to which the top apparel producers are disclosing their supply chains.

According to the report, Apparel companies can improve net profit on average by 3 percent to 7 percent, based off of Segura’s retail ROI calculations and Planet Tracker’s 14,000-strong textile data points. By introducing traceability industry-wide, the researchers conclude that the industry could introduce a retail net profit between $3 to $8 billion.

As for funding, Planet Tracker said apparel companies invested less than $200 million in supply chain traceability technology in the last 10 years. This is significantly less compared to the secondhand clothing market, which has seen $3.5 billion of public and private capital raised since 2015.

Lululemon Athletica Inc and H&M Group are supporting a $250 million fund to accelerate efforts to reduce carbon emissions in the fashion industry's supply chain, as per a report by the non-profit organization Apparel Impact Institute.

Titled Fashion Climate Fund, the initiative brings together clothing brands, philanthropic donors and other industry stakeholders. It hopes to generate $2 billion in funds once effective solutions have been found and scaled up.

Other supporters of the fund include the H&M Foundation and the Schmidt Family Foundation. More are expected to be announced in the coming months, with the fund hoping to raise $10 million from each.

The fund will support new programs and solutions with a structured pipeline for getting from pilot to scale. It will provide a powerful mechanism to overcome the challenges of getting new solutions implemented by the industry, and thereby accelerate the progress on climate action.

The fund will help finance a range of initiatives including expanding the use of renewable energy, developing next-generation materials, ditching the use of coal in manufacturing and improving energy efficiency.

It hopes that the use of philanthropic capital to help fund early stage projects and the forging of partnerships with retailers to scale up successful initiatives will encourage other industry participants to help meet future funding needs.

Korean International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) assured All Pakistan Textile Mills Association (APTMA) of providing all technical and financial support to the textile industry of Pakistan in promoting manufacture and export of non-woven fabric and technical textiles.

AsadShafi, APTMA made a detailed presentation on textile industry in general and prospects of non-woven textile industry in Pakistan. He appreciated the establishment of a testing laboratory by KOICA at NTU, Faisalabad in the first phase of cooperation and lauded the launching of the second phase aimed at providing R&D facilities, advance testing and support to the potential investors. He hoped that this generous offer from KOICA would go a long way to enhance Pakistan’s meagre share of 0.2 percent in the $200 billion global market of technical textiles.

Shafisaid presently not more than 200 manufactures, mostly small and medium sized companies based in Sialkot, Gujranwala, Faisalabad, Lahore and Karachi are engaged in the production of non-woven fabrics at small scale. He was confident that the support of KOICA would encourage large scale manufacturing of technical textiles in Pakistan.

The International Cotton Advisory Committee (ICAC) has named Dr Jodi Scheffler, Crop Genetics Research Unit, USDA, as the 2022 ICAC Researcher of the Year, according to DrKeshavKranthi, Chief Scientist of the ICAC and himself a winner of the award in 2009.

ICAC honors a leading cotton researcher each year by awarding a certificate of recognition, a shield and an honorarium of $1,000. DrScheffler was selected by an independent panel of six eminent experts from six different countries.

DrScheffler, who also is an ad¬junct Professor at Mississippi State University, worked for 12 years in the United Kingdom and Germany. In the UK, she es¬tablished large scale methods to track canola (Bras¬sica napus) pollen movement. This work was used to develop biosafety regulations for the UK, USA and many European countries.

During her time at USDA, DrScheffler has been instrumental in identifying, developing and making available molecular markers for use by the cotton community. Her research focusses on increas¬ing cottonseed use and incorporating traits that will improve host plant resistance (HPR).

In addition to being named the 2022 ICAC Researcher of the Year, DrScheffler has earned many other awards during her distinguished career, including the 2014 National Cotton Genetics Research Award, co-recipient of the 2016 Federal Laboratory Consortium’s Regional STEM Education award and the 2016 Secretary of Agriculture’s Abraham Lincoln Award.

Eleven resale companies including The RealReal, Rent the Runway, ThredUp and Fashionphile have come together to form The American Circular Textiles (ACT) policy group to develop and shape policies to support textile recycling and recovery in the US.

As per a Business of Fashion Report, spearheaded by the Circular Services Group (CSG) and Resource Recycling Systems (RRS), the ACT will help the fashion industry deal with the increasing regulatory scrutiny besides encouraging the introduction of policies supporting efforts to establish a more sustainable and responsible system.

The policy group will introduce a position paper for lawmakers about scaling the circular economy this year. It also plans to bring other relevant companies, organizations and agencies into the fold and will open up to other key circular fashion players, such as textile recyclers, in 2023.

The denim industry has a long way to go before it becomes fully traceable despite tremendous progress achieved in this area. The industry provides information only on the operations of garment manufacturers, fabric weavers, yarn spinners and cotton farmers, says a Sourcing Journal report. Another report titled #WhoMadeMyCotton by denim consultant Anne Oudard, Founder, Simply Suzette and Abu Wells, Sustainable Denim Specialist and Marzia Lantranchi, Founder, Cotton Diaries surveyed 10 global mills and spinners to understand the reasons for difficulties in obtaining this data. The reason the report gives is the unwillingness of brands and suppliers to ask for this data. This report highlights the traceability initiatives of companies like Artistic Milliners, Bossa, Soorty Enterprises, Interloop, Pure Denim, Global Denim, Orta Anadolu, AGI Denim, Candiani Denim and Cone Denim.

Finding traceability solutions

Different countries have achieved different levels of traceability. The US and Brazil are helping denim mills trace the fiber back to the gin or farm through Permanent Bale Identification (PBI) numbers. Other regions like West Africa and Tanzania offer little to no traceability information. Denim made with different fiber types are more difficult to trace. Often, mills withhold information from brands on fiber origins as this may lead to consumers questioning the quality of the garment.

Middlemen such as cotton brokers, agents and merchants make the supply chain more opaque by working with various mills at a time to secure the best rates. To improve traceability, mills are taking proactive steps to find solutions to this issue. Some of these initiatives being introduced include:

Promoting visibility across supply chain

Artistic Milliners has launched the Milliner Organic Project to promote visibility and workers’ rights across the entire cotton supply chain. The direct-to-farm sourcing model adopted by the company makes tracing supply chain easier and creates safe markets for farmers. Working with over 2,000 farmers across 9,300 acre, the project supports the transition of farmers to organic cotton.

Farmers involved in the project have already benefitted with their crop being awarded the third-party certificates, higher yield and reliable support. The crop will be first used by Bestseller’s apparel brand Jack & Jones in its new denim collection scheduled to be launched in December.

Introducing organic farming practices

Meanwhile Soorty has launched the Soorty Organic Cotton Initiative (SOCI developed in partnership with WWF-Pakistan, the Department of Agriculture Extension, Balochistan, and Laudes Foundation. The initiative enables Soorty to introduce organic farming practices to farmers in Balochistan and enhance their standard of living. Others denim mills such as Bossa Denim, Candiani Denim and Interloop, have also launched projects to ensure the well-being of farmers and enhance transparency across the supply chain.

Identifying natural elements in cotton

In 2020, Cone Denim partnered a product and supply-chain traceability specialist Oritain to identify ‘origin footprints’ through forensic science and statistics. The company detected naturally occurring elements in cotton by merging forensic science with statistics. It achieved an inherent footprint specific to each through soil composition and other environmental factors.

Candiani has developed a patented hybrid seed known as the Blue Seed, to produce an extra-long tailor-made fiber produced with less water. The brand aims to develop more such seeds in future.

Bangladesh plans to lift the requirement of double fumigation for importing cotton from the United States (US) on case-to-case basis - after getting the field-level inspection report from agri officials, sources said.

The cotton fumigation procedure will be monitored by a team of the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA) officials. The withdrawal of double-fumigation of cotton had been requested by the United States long back.

The US hadalso requested for the consideration certificates of accredited labs stating that the cotton is free of Boll Weevil, an insect whose larva can remain alive in cotton for nearly 11 months even after fumigation.

The US has been arguing that double fumigation of cotton has financial involvement, and it is also a time-consuming process, which discourages Bangladeshi millers to import cotton from America.