Rethinking Fashion’s Doomed Climate Strategy: Transformers Foundation Launches New Report
The apparel industry is, at last, taking bold climate action. More than 370 apparel companies have committed to or set Science–Based Targets to reduce emissions in line with the Paris Agreement, and regulators in the EU and the US are pushing the private sector to do the same through unprecedented new legislative efforts.
As an organization that strives to present the unified voice of denim suppliers and their ideas for positive change, Transformers Foundation set out to survey denim suppliers in major garment-producing nations to understand how approaches to decarbonization in the sector were impacting them, as well as their perceptions of the coming regulation and to identify any roadblocks to adoption.
What we found is a worrying disconnect between the denim sector’s dominant decarbonization approach and suppliers' own needs, goals, and abilities. The responsibility for decarbonizing fashion is largely falling on suppliers’ shoulders. And without a pivot to these three questions shaping the climate change agenda–who does how much? Who pays? And who or what drives change?–the potential to meet our mitigation goals will fade from view, suppliers warn.
It’s time for a collective approach, which we define as shared ownership and shared responsibility. This requires shifting responsibility for decarbonization from suppliers to one that’s shared across the apparel value chain. Decarbonization must be our problem. This includes sharing of financial resources, but also other types of resources. No target, not even a differentiated target, is viable without collective action.
Join us on 20 November to find out more.
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