Sustainable fashion’s NGOs are celebrating recent gains while gearing up for upcoming events.
For one, the Apparel Impact Institute released its impact report Thursday, tracking fashion industry progress throughout the year.
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Prior to this, the organization released two reports last year, the “Roadmap to Net Zero” and “Unlocking the Trillion-Dollar Fashion Decarbonization Opportunity,” which above all else, puts a number on fashion’s lost progress (just a mere $1 trillion for net-zero aims) while anchoring Aii’s next steps in data.
Among the highlights in the latest impact report are uptake of programs like Clean by Design (comprising best practices for water, carbon and chemical management), the Carbon Leadership project and Coal Phase Out project (powering the move away from coal-powered facilities). In 2021 alone, Aii deployed seven programs (which is where most of its funding goes) working with local subject matter experts to enact change at the facility level. This amounts to 295 facilities and 27 brand participants, or to put it in monetary terms — $38 million saved through greener methods.
Though Aii’s inaugural Clean by Design program entered the scene 15 years ago, the organization was only formally created in 2017 by the Sustainable Apparel Coalition, Natural Resources Defense Council and Target Corporation, among others.
Another feat to note in the report is the announcement of its $250 million Fashion Climate Fund which counts heavyweights such as PVH, Lululemon and H&M in its financier camp, with the goal to remove 150 million tonnes of carbon in the next 28 years.
Meanwhile, on Nov. 1 and 2, the SAC will convene hundreds of sustainability leaders in Singapore for its annual meeting. Topics span eco-labels (which saw H&M in the crossfire with the Norwegian Consumer Authority for greenwashing claims) to fair purchasing practices. Speakers include: the NCA’s head of section Tonje Drevland; The Hong Kong Research Institute of Textiles and Apparel’s chief executive officer Edwin Keh; and H&M’s global product impact lead Ipek Kurtoglu Firat, among others.
“This year’s Annual Meeting comes at a pivotal moment for the apparel and footwear industry,” Amina Razvi, chief executive officer of the SAC, said in a statement. “The industry is under the spotlight like never before, and rightly this brings scrutiny to ensure that sustainability remains at the fore. The Annual Meeting will be a critical moment for both SAC members and the wider industry to come together, move away from divisiveness and polarization, and find areas of common ground where we can drive forward collective action to deliver long-term, sustainable impact.”
