The United Kingdom’s fashion industry is not cutting waste fast enough. Although progress has been made on cutting water use and carbon emissions, this is not true of waste targets. There has been sluggish progress on supply chain waste, as the amount of textile waste sent to landfill has dropped by only four per cent since 2012. In fact, waste in this category has actually increased since 2015.

Among the reasons for the slow progress on waste are: population growth, rising consumption levels, lack of collection infrastructure and the length of time people hold on to clothes. UK consumers buy more clothes by volume than anywhere else in Europe. The rise of fast fashion means many items are only worn a handful of times before being discarded, often in landfill.

Getting people to change their behavior around fashion has been challenging. As well as the economic context and trends in fashion, the EU exit and increased sector scrutiny may all shape the future for UK fashion. In the meanwhile emissions reductions has been achieved by changing the proportion of fibers used in clothing, and increasing the use of sustainable forms of cotton. Cotton sourced from Better Cotton Initiative suppliers has been a large contributor to the improvement.