Supply Chains

A new handbook guides companies on how to use the OECD due diligence framework for achieving living incomes and living wages in global supply chains. It builds on existing OECD standards and focuses on the agriculture, garment and footwear sectors where inadequate incomes and wages have been identified as prevalent risks.

Members of the multi-stakeholder Ethical Trading Initiative will soon need to publish details of their tier-1 suppliers on the Open Supply Hub, a collaborative data sharing platform hosting supplier data from around the world.

Most environmental issues in the cotton industry are being discussed and addressed, but the question remains: is enough being done? Award-winning innovation and sustainability leader, Michela Puddu, touches on a diverse range of subjects, from the cotton production and recycling landscape to its huge and fragmented supply chain, the role of standards & certifications, traceability, impact of global climate change, water challenges, livelihoods and more.

A new report—Hidden cost: Human Rights Policy and Practice in Mexico’s Apparel Supply Chains—examines how the North American country’s leading apparel companies address human rights risks in their supply chains and identifies key labour risks in the industry.

The ZDHC Foundation has come up with a Commodity Chemicals Guide V1.0 and expects brands to urge their suppliers to embed these best practices to ensure a holistic approach to sustainable commodity chemical management within their facilities.

Worldly has launched a new tool — the Facility Data Manager (FDM) — that will help brands prepare for environmental reporting requirements by providing timely primary data that aligns with regulatory frameworks.

Fashion has some bad news for the planet. Most brands are actively “greenwashing” their emissions with none of the companies assessed reporting transparently on the terms, value invested or availability to suppliers, says a new Stand.earth report.

Non-compliance continues to be a bane with an overwhelming 93.8% of all verified assessments of facilities including at least one and in case of SMEs it went up by 7% in 2023, according to the 2023 Impact Report of the Social and Labour Convergence Program (SLCP).

A clean chit notwithstanding, Better Cotton, in not addressing the loopholes with the standard itself, has only exposed itself to further investigation. And that’s despite the sugar-coated admissions that “we will take action to expand our due diligence process."

UK nonprofit Earthsight’s investigations reveal nearly a million tonnes of tainted cotton from some of the most notorious estates in Brazil to clothing manufacturers in Asia, and being supplied to fast fashion behemoths H&M and Zara.