Sustainable Procurement News

Researchers at the University of Sheffield found despite brands making commitments to paying garment workers in their supply chains a living wage, those commitments are not being realised on the ground. The report, which explored commitments made by 20 fashion brands including Adidas, H&M and Primark, said: “Whilst garment companies have made ambitious commitments to pay living wages in their global supply chains they are falling short when it comes to meaningful action to implementing these commitments.”

Google has teamed up with luxury fashion brand Stella McCartney and fashion innovation consultancy Current Global to develop a new supply chain tool. The tool has been designed to help companies add visibility to their supply chain at the raw material stage.

Congress and customs officers are increasingly wary of imports made with forced labor, but the global supply chain remains tough to police.  

The global fashion industry's overall efforts to operate more sustainability have slowed by one-third on a year-on-year basis, with actions failing to decouple emissions from the sector's rapid growth in a way that would align with the Paris Agreement's aims.

Most sustainable cotton management frameworks just skim the surface. The leaders at Wrangler wanted to dig deeper. The American denim brand sought to understand the actual effects of cotton farming on the environment. “Even the organizations that are trying to do something meaningful find themselves tripped up. If you highlight a ‘sustainable’ cotton, that means all the rest is unsustainable, right?” says Roian Atwood, senior director of global sustainable business for Wrangler. “So we started by rejecting all frameworks.” The brand, which produced its first pair of jeans in 1947, turned to science. What the company discovered led to a new denim collection called Rooted made using traceable cotton from family farms in five states.

In a 66-page report, the Human Rights Watch organisation has made an extremely ambivalent assessment of the working conditions of textile workers worldwide. Six years after the Rana Plaza disaster, the finger is still pointed at fashion labels for their persistence in pushing costs down, which their suppliers translate into a negative impact on wages and working conditions.

Tengiva has launched a Responsible Stock Management label, created to identify and promote all manufacturers undertaking “logistic and operational efforts” to divert materials from landfill and incineration - by selling excess stock online via its platform.

In an effort to support U.S. farmers and further its commitment to sustainability, Wrangler launched a premium collection of locally-sourced denim on Thursday.

The apparel industry has trust issues, and according to a panel of industry experts, those issues are getting in the way of doing good business. At Kingpins in Amsterdam last week, founder Andrew Olah hosted representatives from social compliance organizations to discuss the need for corporate social responsibility standards in the denim supply chain. While moves within the industry, like Reformation’s and Everlane’s willingness to share supplier information with the end consumer, are helping to move the needle toward transparency, companies within the supply chain remain wary of the motives behind social compliance certifications. Some argue it’s an added cost, while others boast about their certifications.

Basque clothing brand SKFK is set to launch a new monthly subscription service to enable its customers to rent apparel from a constantly updating selection of 40 premium outfits. The company, which has consistently worked towards reducing its environmental and social impacts in recent years, will debut the Circular Closet service in France, Germany, Belgium, Holland and its native Spain in May.

Adidas has launched a sneaker made from virgin plastic that can be ground up and remade again, as part of the company's bid to mitigate the plastic crisis. The Futurecraft Loop shoe was launched 17 April by Adidas as a first step for the brand to help "get off plastic waste". The aim was to create a product that could be recycled as part of a closed-loop system.

Tommy Hilfiger is to introduce 100% recycled cotton denim styles in its spring Tommy Jeans collection, thanks to support from parent company PVH's Denim Center in Amsterdam – its first hub in Europe dedicated to setting new standards for producing denim in a faster, more consistent and more environmentally-friendly way.

The Infrastructure Development Company (IDCOL) has announced that it will be seeking US$100 million in loans from the Green Climate Fund (GCF), and hopes to secure a further US$66 million through borrower co-financing in order to improve energy efficiency in the Bangladeshi textile sector.

Google is developing a tool which will use data analytics and machine-learning to enable fashion brands to make responsible sourcing decisions. The project, which was announced at the Copenhagen Fashion Summit, will see Google partnering with luxury brand Stella McCartney on a pilot to collect data with the aim of providing brands with greater transparency into the environmental impact of textiles.

A leading fashion retailer website has launched a new feature to help customers shop consciously online. The Iconic has introduced 'Considered', which is a new environmentally-friendly service that allows shoppers to seamlessly shop ethical sustainable fashion. The game-changing initiative aims to make shopping easier for customers to make conscious purchasing decisions.  Using The Iconic's five 'Sustainability Credentials' categories, customers can filter and find products, allowing them to shop by their personal sustainability values. The categories include animal friendly, community engagement, eco-production, fair production and sustainable materials. 

PVH Corp. on Monday announced its corporate responsibility strategy, dubbed "Forward Fashion" to increase transparency and sustainable practices, according to a company press release. The company aims to "reduce the company's negative impacts to zero, increase positive impacts to 100% and improve over one million lives throughout its value chain," per the release. PVH's strategy addresses climate change, the use of waste and hazardous chemicals, worker safety and programs for women.

Like the cotton growing, weaving and finishing that come before it, denim trim suppliers are taking measures to reduce their intake of water, chemicals, energy and raw materials. “There is a misconception that because a trim is such a small part of the overall garment, the choice of materials doesn’t matter. But it really does,” said Debbie Shakespeare, Avery Dennison RBIS senior director of sustainability and compliance. “Even the small choices have an impact.”

Sportswear and outdoor brands including Adidas, Reebok and Patagonia have been ranked the most transparent fashion brands in the annual Fashion Transparency Index. The index, which is compiled by the Fashion Revolution campaign group, scores the world’s largest fashion businesses according to how much information they disclose about their sustainability practices.

European and U.S. fashion brands sourcing from Vietnam must stop their "harsh" tactics that push down workers' wages and trap millions in poverty, labour rights campaigners said on Thursday. Vietnam, which is one of the world's largest garment manufacturers and supplies fashion chains such as Zara and H&M, is home to over 6 000 garment and textile factories that employ about 3 million people, government figures showed.

Following on from the huge success of the the BBC’s Blue Planet series, presented by Sir David Attenborough, the corporation has teamed up with apparel manufacturer Teemill to produce a range of ‘sustainable’ garments. BBC Earth says it has established the collaboration in order to “disrupt the fashion industry and propose a solution to one of the greatest environmental problems caused by fast fashion – landfill.”

Online fashion retailer PrettyLittleThing (PLT) has debuted a new collection made using recycled materials, including pre-consumer factory offcuts and recycled polyester derived from discarded plastic bottles.

Gap Inc. may be on the cusp of becoming two independently public traded companies, but Old Navy and the yet-to-be-named company that will consist of the Gap brand, Athleta, Banana Republic, Intermix and Hill City, share the same mission for sustainability. Gap Inc. announced on Earth Day new plans to accelerate sustainable product innovation for Old Navy and Banana Republic, including adopting more eco-friendly processes for denim.

Denim industry event series Kingpins has revealed the next phase of its work to ensure all exhibitors comply with a set of mandatory environmental and social standards by end of 2020 to help drive positive change in the denim manufacturing sector. Following on from its initial announcement in February that Kingpins will mandate corporate social responsibility standards for its exhibitors, the show has today revealed that these denim mills will also be expected to meet stringent chemical management standards aligned to ZDHC (zero discharge of hazardous chemicals) criteria over thee next 18 months.