A clutch of leading fashion brands including H&M, Inditex, Stella McCartney, Ben & Jerry's, HH Global and Kering have announced a collective commitment to purchase over half a million tonnes of low-carbon, low-footprint alternative fibres for fashion textiles and paper packaging.
- The move, it is claimed, will support the protection of the world's vital forests and ecosystems and lower forest degradation pressures from the fashion and packaging supply chains.
The Backdrop: The move has been spearheaded by environmental nonprofit Canopy.
- Every year, over 3.2 billion trees are cut down to produce fibre for packaging and clothing, releasing vast amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere.
- Alternatives to wood—such as agricultural residues and recycled textiles—are readily available and can be scaled in order to prevent the logging of these forests at this untenable rate.
- Moving to Next Generation Solutions could help avoid almost 1Gt of CO2 emissions between now and 2030.
- The market pull is said to be essential to attract the investment necessary to scale these game-changing Next Generation alternatives on ecologically meaningful timelines.
- One-third of the world's most influential companies have yet to make forest conservation commitments, despite the scientific community's warnings that at least 50% of the world's forests need to be conserved or restored by 2030 to ensure global temperature rises stay below 1.5°C.
The New Commitment: The commitment towards more sustainable, lower-carbon alternatives — known as Next Generation Solutions—reflects a building urgency across industries to accelerate the transition to nature-positive business models.
- The new commitment will help unlock the investment needed to build 10–20 new low-footprint, Next Generation pulp mills; provide farm communities and cities with new markets to replace the burning of straw residue and textile landfilling; and prevent an estimated 2.2 million tonnes of GHG emissions from going into the atmosphere relative to the equivalent production of virgin forest fibre.
- The signatories have also committed to ensuring their respective supply chains are free of Ancient and Endangered Forests and are calling on industry peers to follow suit by shifting towards sustainable Next Generation alternatives—such as fibres made from agricultural residue or recycled textiles.
The Next Generation Solutions: When compared to forest fibres, Next-Generation Solutions have on average:
- 95–130% less CO2 emissions,
- 18–70% less fossil energy resource depletion,
- 88–100% less land-use impacts,
- at least 1/5 lower impact on biodiversity/threatened species.
What They Said:
This commitment will allow us to take a historic leap closer to the $64 billion of investments in sustainable alternatives needed to ensure forest conservation for our planet's climate and biodiversity stability.
— Nicole Rycroft
Founder and Executive Director
Canopy
We are excited to be joining our long-time partner Canopy to support a rapid scale-up of sustainable Next Generation materials production as well as uptake of low-carbon, low-footprint alternative fibres for textiles and paper packaging.
— Yoann Régent
Head of Sustainable Sourcing & Nature Initiatives
Kering
Moving away from virgin fibre is part of our larger strategy to reduce the footprint of our operations. While it's clear that rapidly ending the age of fossil fuels is required to avoid catastrophic climate change, companies still must do the hard work to ensure their packaging isn't contributing to deforestation as well.
— Jenna Evans
Global Sustainability Manager
Ben & Jerry's
