"In the race to reach customers first and offer them trendy clothes, fashion industry is increasingly ignoring the alarming signs of eco-concerns. As the year end draws closer, the industry must step up to the challenge and redeem their terrible track record by reducing carbon emissions. While leading companies’ CEOs continue to delay the climate commitment process, denim supply chains are continuing the harmful emissions into the atmosphere without any alternative."
In the race to reach customers first and offer them trendy clothes, fashion industry is increasingly ignoring the alarming signs of eco-concerns. As the year end draws closer, the industry must step up to the challenge and redeem their terrible track record by reducing carbon emissions. While leading companies’ CEOs continue to delay the climate commitment process, denim supply chains are continuing the harmful emissions into the atmosphere without any alternative.
Creating small quantities is a characteristic inherent in the handloom industry. For handloom to imitate machineA report by Carbon Disclosure Project reveals, companies within the fashion sector might be ignoring as much as 90 per cent of the climate pollution they generate. The fashion industry is attempting to solve the problem of its own emissions by outsourcing production to contractors in countries with less strict emissions regulations, namely China or Bangladesh. But the problem seems to get worse with time. The industry generates about 3 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, roughly equal to the pollution created by putting 163 million new passenger cars on the road. A study by a leading clothing company concluded that one pair of denim jeans produces 44 pounds of greenhouse gas emissions, equivalent to driving a car almost 48 miles or burning over 21 pounds of coal. Manufacturing a single pair of denim jeans produces 44 pounds of CO2, roughly equal to the greenhouse gas emissions from driving a passenger car nearly 50 miles.
Time to clean up the act
Companies need to step away from climate commitments that are a partial solution to its role in the climate crisis. There must also be significant reductions across the fashion industry’s entire supply chain, including calling on overseas producers to hold themselves to higher standards than may often be the case. The bulk of fashion’s climate pollution (an estimated 60-90 per cent on average) comes from material sourcing, garment production and transport. Yet, some companies’ climate commitments leave out this basic part of their pollution footprint. There are numerous tools and technologies available for companies to make major reductions in these stages—even from independently owned factories overseas.
As a start, they first need to demonstrate farsightedness, engaging with climate issues in a long-term, sustained way. Second, they must pledge full transparency in their efforts to bring down emissions. Currently, only H&M and Kering provide full transparency on greenhouse gases in their supply chain. Real climate action requires fashion companies to assess, track and disclose their full climate pollution footprint and reductions over time. While there are social campaigns running, the impact still needs to be weighed upon.
