Emissions

A recent study has mapped material flows across London's fashion supply chain, identifying where carbon hotspots occur and shows that fashion makes a significant contribution to the city’s consumption-based emissions associated with the stuff are used. 

A new report says that the global textiles & fashion industry will need to take drastic action to stay within the 1.5°C trajectory. It will need to cut down emissions by 45% in the next seven years.

In a “revolutionary” innovation that claims to reduce pollution and limits use of virgin fossil resources to make new products, H&M in association with Illinois-based LanzaTech has dropped polyester garments created partly from “captured emissions.”

Electrification could pave the path to decarbonization of the textile sector and scientists have identified and analysed four separate electrification pathways that could lower the CO2 footprint of this industry.

The Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC) has launched a Decarbonisation Programme which will focus on collaboration, member support and delivering tools and guidance to make achieving these targets possible.

Fintech leader Klarna’s upgraded CO2e tracker will use Vaayu's technology to automatically calculate carbon emissions for more than 50 million fashion purchases on a product-level in real-time.

Each stakeholder in the leather industry, be it the tanner, trader, supplier or customer must get involved to get leather to a safe place in the mind of new younger consumers, and throughout the supply network involved. There are no impossible hurdles for a determined leather industry to make great strides quickly and set an achievable target date with milestones.

Achieving a carbon neutral apparel and textiles industry will be dependent on robust and efficient climate legislation, and to halve emissions in upstream production by 2030, the industry will need to decarbonise every stage of the process, says a position paper.

If the just-concluded COP27 at Sharm El-Sheikh in Egypt is anything to go by, the fashion industry has cut a sorry figure. The industry has made progress in recent years, but all that pales into insignificance given the goal that shifts farther by the day. Add to that the rampant greenwashing, the constant self-adulation, and the abject failure in not letting the Global South into the entire process. A texfash.com take on the Conference.

There is an urgent need to resuscitate the textile industry in a post-Brexit UK. Reinvigorating it could also help address problems related to emissions, waste water and fair workplace.