The Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC) has launched a new Decarbonisation Programme to support and drive the sector to work towards emissions reduction.
- The programme will focus on collaboration, member support and delivering tools and guidance to make achieving these targets possible.
How It Will Work: The programme will take a collaborative approach, and drive action across the SAC’s membership – which represents about half of the apparel and footwear industry – and the wider industry.
- The SAC will identify the biggest opportunities for impact and help accelerate the large-scale change needed to drive emissions reduction across the industry at scale.
- SAC corporate members will be required to commit and set Science Based Targets (SBTs) from 2023. From here, the SAC will support members to commit and set SBTs, followed by scaling high impact solutions needed to achieve them collectively.
The SAC has identied six most impactful areas through which members can collectively drive change and create sustainable impact:
- Maximising material efficiency: reducing the amount of fibre and materials that go to waste through design, material usage and manufacturing methodology;
- Scaling sustainable materials and practices: increasing the use of more sustainable materials and practices;
- Accelerating the development of innovative materials: increasing investment in next generation materials, including textile recycling and bio-based materials;
- Proliferating energy efficiency: making energy efficiency a priority across all manufacturing facilities;
- Eliminating coal in manufacturing: replacing coal with renewable energy in all manufacturing facilities;
- Shifting to 100% renewable electricity: deploying renewable energy solutions.
The Work So Far: Work has already begun, with capacity building efforts under way for the scaling up of collaborative solutions based on the six interventions.
- The SAC has also carried out several best practice sharing webinars and peer-to-peer learning sessions, and will be issuing step-by-step SBT guidance in the coming months.
- The programme will continue to develop tracking and reporting of the SBT adoption progress, tracking and reporting of GHG emissions reductions through scaling solutions such as promoting the adoption of renewable energy options, substituting coal and proliferating energy efficiency projects and so forth.
What They Said:
Through the Decarbonisation Programme, we are building important collective action solutions to drive large-scale systematic change required in our global supply chains which no single company can do this alone. Members are listening and learning from each other to address the most pressing and difficult issues we are all facing in different geographical regions, driving shared solutions to shared problems and making sure our targets become a reality. It’s the only way we can ensure our industry has a future.
— Joyce Tsoi
Director (Collective Action Programmes)
Sustainable Apparel Coalition
