Fashion’s synthetic fibre addiction has not undergone any significant change over the last five years. And, amidst an accelerating climate emergency, over one-fifth of the largest fashion companies have recorded a heavier reliance on fossil-fuel-derived fabrics.
- The findings are from the report Synthetics Anonymous 2.0: Fashion’s persistent plastic problem published Wednesday by Changing Markets Foundation (CMF).
- This report picks up from the earlier Synthetics Anonymous: fashion brands’ addiction to fossil fuels published in June 2021.
Greenwashing Continues: The report underlined: “Brands continue to mask their addiction to synthetic fibres under the guise of commitments to increase their proportion of ‘sustainable’ materials, including recycled synthetics (mostly polyester and nylon); however, green claims on polyester made from recycled polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles as the main sustainability strategy for synthetics have been facing increasing scrutiny over the past year from regulators and consumers concerned about misleading environmental claims.”
A Litany of Ugly Truths:
- Only one company (Reformation), of the 55 analysed for this study, featured in the Frontrunners category. Reformation is committed to phasing out virgin synthetics by 2030 and reducing all synthetics (virgin and recycled) to less than 1% of total sourcing by 2025.
- Six of 55 companies (10%) had no climate targets whatsoever.
- Lululemon and Boohoo reported increasing their emissions. In 2021, Lululemon increased total Scope 3 emissions by 36% over 2020 and 79% compared with its baseline in 2018. Boohoo’s 2021 emissions over 2020 increased by 29%.
- Despite commitments to the Science-Based Targets Initiative (SBTi), UNFCCC’s Fashion Industry Charter for Climate Action, the Carbon Disclosure Project or Textile Exchange, several companies do not map their synthetics supply chains and thus, cannot deal with the basic risks of sourcing, such as reliance on conflict oil, coal and fracked gas.
- Across all fibre types, several brands were completely dependent on recycled polyester for all their recycled fibre content; these brands included Morrisons (100%), Next (97%) and Puma (93%).
- Of the 33 companies that revealed their synthetics volume and percentage, Boohoo was the most reliant on synthetics as a percentage of its total annual fibre used (64%) and was also the brand found to have the most polyester included in the majority of its textile products (54%).
- Nike and Inditex reported the highest volumes of synthetics and polyester used in their products, disclosing volumes of 166,343t and 131,548t, respectively.
- Fourteen of 55 brands (25%) have increased their use of synthetics, both in terms of the percentage of total fibre mix and total volume over this period.
The Call: The report summarised the state of affairs, thus:
The disparity between fashion’s sustainability agenda that is hyper marketed in the windows and on the websites of brands and the concrete evidence of their inaction on fossil-fuel-derived fabrics detailed in this report should act as a call to action for policymakers, investors and retailers to advocate for and embrace legislation that can regulate and help to rehabilitate fashion’s synthetic fibre addiction, which should also put them on track to meet climate targets and align them with the circular economy agenda
