The fashion industry’s current linear “take-make-waste” business model is incompatible with achieving key climate, nature and human rights goals, with impacts only increasing while growth remains a business imperative, a new report from Textile Exchange has underlined.
- It has invoked existing scientific and academic literature to provide a set of pathways to reimagine value creation beyond exponential increases in the extraction and production of new raw materials to create new products.
- The report is titled Reimagining Growth Landscape Analysis.
THE HIGHLIGHTS: The report has identified a number of pathways for business change:
- Capping virgin fossil-based resources, and instead focusing on sustainably-sourced renewable (e.g. regenerative or organic) or closed-loop recycled resources, feeding into products that are designed for longevity and circularity.
- Producing fewer items of higher quality, with their true value reflected in their price.
- Reducing overproduction through the use of advanced technologies and machine learning to eliminate wasteful methods, including deliberate excess.
- Increasing revenue share from circular business models, including services such as repair, remaking, rental, resale, and responsible take-back schemes.
- Promoting equity and respect for human rights, ensuring decent work and living wages throughout the value chain.
- Eliminating messages or sales tactics promoting overconsumption and obsolescence, with marketing budgets redirected to lower impact and circular solutions.
- Shifting to alternative ownership and governance models.
- Demanding and supporting policy that will level the playing field, facilitating sustainability and a market-level transition.
EMPHASIS ON TERMINOLOGIES: The report lays considerable emphasis on terms and their definitions.
- Over three-quarters (77%) of participants in Textile Exchange’s survey on terminology said having a shared language that the industry is aligned on to address the topic of production volumes and revenue growth targets relative to sustainability targets would be useful
- The survey didn’t however result in unity around one word or phrase that could be used.
- To elevate the importance of reimagining growth as an essential strategy for the fashion, apparel, and textile industry to achieve its climate and nature targets, Textile Exchange proposes that the most critical step at this stage is aligning on the principles associated with this area of work, rather than on the terminology.
- No single term is perfect, and focusing too much on finding the right one risks becoming a distraction from the essential work that needs to start now.
THE RECOMMENDATIONS: The report has made four explicit suggestions:
- Multi stakeholder dialogue and action: Further discourse and consultation is needed on this topic with stakeholders from across the value chain and wider related actors to explore and action the barriers, challenges and pathways. Cross-sectoral collaboration so as to learn from other industries may also be considered. Collaboration across NGOs, intergovernmental organisations, and other relevant stakeholders will be critical, as achieving a post-growth textile industry isn’t something any brand or organisation can do individually. Further, having decision-makers and senior executives involved in such convenings or dialogues is critical, as is ensuring representation and inclusivity in the conversations.
- Reduction targets: In order to set resource limits or define how much less businesses should produce, there is a need to work toward setting shared, measurable growth or volume reduction targets across the industry specifically, recognising the differences in what may be needed for different material types, as well as to create a roadmap as to what such a transition can look like. These should be aligned to existing methodologies and grounded in scientific and ethical processes. They will be most robust when developed through multi-stakeholder input and dialogue. This should happen in parallel to immediate reduction efforts from the industry and not at the expense of forward motion while such targets are established. Mechanisms for monitoring and evaluating progress, as well as ensuring accountability, will also be important.
- Research: There are data gaps to be filled to help support the transition to a regenerative economy and post-growth industry. For instance, deeper knowledge on the economic implications and repercussions of this shift, as well as actions to be taken, especially around reduction, so as to mitigate and avoid negative unintended consequences, would help ensure a just transition, and enable equality and respect for the human rights of producers, workers, and communities. A global study on consumer attitudes to map consumption patterns and behaviours by countries/ regions, digging into cultural differences and readiness states for adoption of sustainable and circular practices, as well as how to incentivise/nudge them, could also support increased understanding for new business models.
- Policy paper: There is a fundamental need for policy to support the transition to post-growth, addressing particularly the challenges of overproduction and overconsumption in the textiles industry. The report has documented ideas of some of the instruments this could include. A dedicated paper based on consultation, including with policymakers, exploring these in more detail would be of further value. This should outline what could be employed at a domestic, regional, and international level, and how it will impact the industry, as well as some of the policies already being introduced for textiles (their values and their limitations), in order to inform, guide, and build capacity for policymakers. To ensure focus is at a systems change level, further research should also be undertaken to explore policies that have been employed for other sectors through periods of transition, especially those that resulted in job losses and reskilling needs.
