Chinese fast fashion brand Shein will allot $50 million to its newly launched Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) fund over the next five years. As per an Apparel Insider report, the money will be used to fulfill Shein’s commitment to address global textile waste management and develop circular economy.

The fund was launched with a new partnership between Shein and the Or Foundation-a US and Ghana-based not-for-profit organization collaborating with secondhand clothing retailers and up-cyclers in Ghana. The fund will boost the implementation of environmental strategies in secondhand garments production.

An initial grant recipient, receiving $5million annually for three years from the overall Fund, The Or Foundation will use the money to expand its Mabilgu (sisterhood) Apprenticeship Program for young women who carry bales of second-hand clothing on their heads, incubating community businesses transforming textile waste into new products, pilot fibre-to-fibre initiatives with Ghanaian textile manufacturers and to modernise and Kantamanto Market.

The Or Foundation will also redistribute a portion of the initial grant to allied organizations in Ghana that Shein will work with.

One of India’s leading organic agricultural cultivators and traders, Delight Group and the Delight Health and Wellness Foundation are collaborating with Good Earth Cotton to adapt the program and its principles in India.

According to the program, 1977 Indian cotton farms, spanning 3,689 hectareare converting to Good Earth Cotton.They commenced this conversion in mid- 2021 by digital mapping, soil sampling, data collection and GPS tagging to build a base analysis from which the Good Earth Cotton program and principles will be reviewed and adapted to bring climate positive improvements to a smallholder farming system and Indian climatic conditions.

As per The Spin Off report, the growers will fully adopt the Good Earth Cotton program in the next three years. Backed by the advanced transparency technology, FiberTech, the program aims to reach complete transparency and real-time verification throughout the global supply chain.

Delight Group will use the FibreTracetechnology to verify and trace the Good Earth Cotton production in India. It will also introduce the technology across certified Indian Organic cotton in 2022.The partnership will lead to production of over 200,000 bales of Good Earth Cotton in 2023.

Scheduled in July 2022, the next edition of Premiere Vision Paris will be a hybrid show with the physical event running from July 05-07 at the Parc des Expositions de Paris Nord Villeprinte and the Digital Show running from July 04-08, 2022 being held online on the website and marketplace.

As per a report by The Spin, the event will present F/W 2023/2024 collections of brands and products from 1,190 exhibitors from 44 countries, including spinners, weavers, tanners, textile designers, accessory and component makers and fashion manufacturers. The event will have 10 per cent more than the 1,080 visitors who attended the show in February this year and 32 per cent more from the 900 exhibitors attended the event in September 2021

The show will host a series of new initiatives to serve the changing demands of the sector and facilitate its environmental and social transition. Prominent amongst them will be the Smart Creation area dedicated to responsible innovations hosting 38 companies, a new Eco-Innovation forum, a new Eco-Innovation Trend Tasting seminar and various conferences dedicated to the challenges of sustainability held at the show and online.

A two-part document, the Fashion & Sustainability white paper will shed light on the major sustainability issues facing the industry, and a study conducted with the IFM to determine consumers’ purchasing criteria and assess their knowledge of sustainable materials.

The show will introduce new Performance Codes to help visitors showcase sustainable offerings at the Première Vision shows and its online Marketplace. These performance codes will be created by Première Vision and indicated on products found in the Eco-Innovation forum and the Marketplace. They will help describe the characteristics of eco-designed materials including organic materials and bio-based polymers obtained from a minimum of 30 per cent of renewable bio-based substances.

The event will also host 20 conferences, including fashion seminars and a Live Sourcing experienceand online during the Digital Show. Industry professionals and experts will speak about major issues including the ecological transformation, digitization, the metaverse, trends and more, to help visitors better understand the challenges of the fashion industry.

The Economic Survey for the financial year 2021-22 shows, growth in Pakistan’s textile sector declined to 3.2 per cent during July-March 2021-22 as compared to 8 per cent in the same period last year,

As per a Business Recorder report, most growth was noted in the areas of wool products manufacturing with the highest surge of 38.9 per cent in the production of wool blankets, 27.9 per cent in the production of wool and carpet yarn, and 19.1 per cent in production of woolen worsted cloth. Production of yarn and cloth showed marginal growth of 0.7 per cent and 0.3 per cent respectively.

The production of jute was restrained by the depreciation of the rupee. However, the surge in textile machinery imports led to a rising demand for concessionary financing from textile firms.

The wearing apparel grew by 34 per cent as it gained traction locally as well as in the international market as garments production grew at 34 per cent during the period. The export of garments also grew by 33.9 per cent. Knitwear exports contracted by 4.8 per cent in quantity terms, while it increased by 34.1 per cent in terms of value during the period under review.

The ready-made garment exports show a massive growth of 33.9 per cent in quantity and 26.2 per cent in value from 27.8 million dozen to 37.3 million dozen worth $2.8 billion as compared to $2.27 billion for the same period last year.

Exports of towels grew by 18.3 per cent in terms of value and 5.1 per cent in terms of quantity to $819.6 million.

Meanwhile, Pakistan’s exportsof synthetic textile fabrics increased by 27.6 per cent in quantity to $343.59 million as compared to $269.20 million the same period last year.

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.