TOP STORY

4 Countries, A Failing System and 2,400 Wasted Tonnes of Wool; But Nordics Still Import

Across four Nordic countries, an estimated 2,400 tonnes of raw wool are discarded every year—burned, buried, or left unused—while the same countries collectively import over 6,500 tonnes of wool and yarn from abroad. A feasibility study commissioned by Nordic Innovation finds the cause is not fibre quality, but systemic fragmentation: missing infrastructure, absent classification standards, and a near-total lack of regional processing capacity.

Latest: Updates
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CIRCULARITY / RECYCLING / SECONDS / WASTE

Informal Recycling Work Heightens Exposure to Labour and Environmental Harm Across Value Chains, OECD Analysis Finds

Recycling processes in the garment and footwear sector were found to carry heightened labour, environmental and governance risks, driven by widespread informality, low margins and hazardous working conditions. The analysis highlighted forced labour, child labour, unsafe facilities and criminal waste practices as material exposures within collection, sorting and reprocessing systems.

 
FLASHPOINT: CLIMATE
Beyond Headlines / STICA Report

The apparel sector now produces more climate data than at any earlier point. Fifty companies under the STICA initiative disclosed emissions inventories, transition plans, and targets in 2025. Yet sector-wide emissions continue to rise, and nearly half of signatories report they are behind on primary climate targets. The distance between disclosure capability and actual decarbonisation performance is not closing.

Climate Impact / Garment Workers

A new Roadmap has urged global fashion brands sourcing from major garment-producing hubs to fund and implement a Just Energy Transition across their supply chains, warning that persistent financing gaps, weak adaptation measures and price-driven purchasing practices are shifting climate risks onto suppliers and workers throughout production networks.

 
 
 
FOCUS: COTTON

‘MSP Isn’t Distorting Prices’: CCI Head on Imports, Yields, and the Road to Cotton Stability

The single largest cotton trading company and a public sector undertaking under the Union Ministry of Textiles, the Cotton Corporation of India (CCI), established in 1970, undertakes price support and commercial purchase operations to safeguard the economic interest of farmers in the cotton growing regions and to ensure its smooth supply to the textile industry. A Q&A with its Chairman-Cum-Managing Director, Lalit Kumar Gupta.

 
 
 
SPOTLIGHT EDITIONS: SELECT 4
 
 

"Quote Unquote"

Kristina Elinder Lilja
Kristina Elinder Lilja
Senior Director, Sustainable Finance and Engagement
Apparel Impact Institute
Carbon pricing would be the most structurally embedded risk and hardest to reverse. Carbon pricing is different as it sits directly on Scope 3, where 96–99% of apparel emissions occur. That means it’s embedded in Tier 2 manufacturing and upstream energy systems. Unless those systems decarbonise, cost exposure compounds year over year.

"Quote Unquote"

Sophie Waegebaert
Sophie Waegebaert
Crop Researcher
Inagro
We see opportunities for hemp as a crop that is not related to other agricultural crops. This has a positive impact on breaking the cycle of diseases and pests. Hemp therefore acts as a kind of fallow crop. This means that the crop certainly has its value in the Flemish crop rotation system. Moreover, farmers are looking for alternative crops, and hemp could be a solution here.
 
FOCUS: LEATHER

IILF 2026 Exposes Gap Between Boardroom Sustainability and Tannery Floor Reality

Chennai's IILF 2026 exposed contradictions shaping India's leather industry: innovative chemical systems alongside organisational failures, Trump tariffs suppressing demand yet prices holding firm, and sustainability frameworks that never reach tannery workers. The 'Leather Carnival' demonstrated both the sector's professionalisation and its struggle to reconcile traditional identity with market realities.