The Global Fashion Agenda, in collaboration with The Boston Consulting Group, published a ground-breaking in-depth assessment of the fashion industry's environmental and social performance the first edition of the Pulse of the fashion industry report. The findings will be presented at this year's Copenhagen Fashion Summit (CFS), to take place on May 11, at the Copenhagen concert hall.
In the past decade, the global fashion industry has been an engine for global development and made progress on sustainability. Awareness is growing and individually, companies are optimizing business practices to limit their negative impact. But with current trajectories of production and consumption, pressures on natural resources and social conditions will intensify by 2030 to the point of threatening industry growth itself.
The Global Fashion Agenda has made an in-depth assessment of the industries environmental and social performance it offers the first comprehensive common fact base on the health of the industry with a "Pulse Score" by type of company, size, region and stage in the value chain.
Improving its environmental and social performance would not just advance the industry's commercial prospects, it would also add as much as €160 billion by 2030 in annual value to the world economy. To point the way toward a better fashion industry, the Pulse of the fashion industry report lays out the "Landscape for Change." Yet it also shows that even if most of the industry implemented today's best practices individually, it would not be enough to capture this value and close the gap.
The industry can move beyond fragmented individual actions with incremental results. Through collective efforts the industry can unite around an agenda for change, drive the needed systemic change and work jointly on disruptive innovation.
The fashion industry has a clear opportunity to act differently, pursuing profit and growth while also creating new value for society and therefore for the world economy. It comes with an urgent need to place environmental, social and ethical improvements on management's agenda.
