When you think about industries that contribute most to greenhouse gas emissions, I’m willing to bet that the first to come to mind are transportation, agriculture, coal plants — the list goes on. I’m also willing to bet that the fashion industry would not be in the top 5, maybe even top 10, of that list. Yet, as it turns out, the fashion industry is responsible for around 5% of GHG emissions globally; it produces over 1 billion tons of CO2 per year. What’s more, people are buying more clothes than ever before, and wearing them for less time before they’re thrown out or given away. The issues facing the fashion industry — one of the most influential industries of all time, as we live our lives in its products — were the topic of a meeting I was fortunate to attend today.
Influential and profitable brands Puma, Burberry, Hugo Boss, and H&M sent their corporate responsibility executives to discuss the Fashion Industry Charter for Climate Action, an agreement with 29 founding signatories, including Adidas, Stella McCartney, Arcteryx, Levi’s, Guess, and Salomon, among others. The charter is an extensive framework for creating a sustainable, lower-emission, still-profitable business model for fashion worldwide, providing a unified, coherent position on climate for the fashion sector. Its chief promise is that the industry will achieve a 30% reduction in emissions by 2030. It has also created a commitment to set the pathway to decarbonization for the sector, and through it, brands are trying to align themselves with the Paris Agreement commitments and ethics.
It’s important first to know where emissions actually come from within the fashion sector. First, the creation of textiles is a huge contributor to GHG emissions, and was stressed by several panelists as a major target for reductions. Often, the materials used to create those textiles are not sustainably sourced, and are shipped from around the world by fossil fuel-powered methods. Finished textiles are then shipped (burning — you guessed it — fossil fuels) to large garment manufacturers, whose warehouses and facilities run on coal-fired electricity. From there, products are shipped around the world, a process which produces enormous amounts of GHG emissions.
So there is a giant number of steps between the time a textile is made and when a pair of shoes arrives at your favorite store or your front door or your mailbox. What this charter is attempting to do is to minimize the emissions in every one of those steps. The two most notable ways the signatories plan to do this are
- Giving priority to shipping businesses that use low-carbon, renewably-fueled methods of transport, and
- Using renewable energy to power its facilities and operations. In fact, the charter includes a commitment that the fashion sector will use 90% renewable energy by 2024.
The industry is partnering with shipping, transport, and logistic companies worldwide, such as Maersk, a Danish transport conglomerate. According to Maersk, shipping needs to get to 0 emissions by the year 2050, and to do this, a fully viable, completely new infrastructure must be in place by the year 2030.
The goals set out by this fashion industry charter are quite lofty. Yet there are two factors that give the fashion sector an incredible platform from which to effect change. First is that this industry’s entire identity and worth are predicated on creativity; the executives present at the panel emphasized the fashion world’s enthusiasm about tackling the issue of emissions with great ingenuity and passion, their very forte. Second is that the fashion industry has such significant cultural influence across the globe. For many, these multi-billion-dollar companies have the power to pick what is in style and what is not, what values are worth having, and where money should be spent. The fact that they are choosing to assert the coolness and morality of climate action and decarbonization should give us hope that other influential sectors will come to view climate change as seriously. In the meantime, these fashion signatories ought to be applauded and to be kept in mind when making purchasing decisions. Your dollars serve as an endorsement. Endorse responsible corporations.