Towards the end of the year, the fashion industry turned up the heat once again when it came to its sustainability efforts: these were discussed, among other things, at the COP28 climate conference, but various studies also took a close look at supposedly sustainable initiatives such as biomass and textile collections for recycling purposes. Individual brands impressed with innovations. Read through an exciting December!
COP28
This year’s COP climate summit, held in Dubai, brought together delegates from 199 organizations to determine further steps to limit global temperature rise. As the UN Climate Change Conference COP28 comes to a close, FashionUnited looks back in this article at all the notable events that took place during the two-week conference, many of which aimed to define the sustainable future of fashion.
The panel discussion “How to Clothe 10 Billion People Sustainably” brought together people from across the supply chain, including Ganni and Fashion Revoluten, to find actionable solutions and answer the question of how to clothe 10 billion people sustainably.
Greenwashing
Almost six months ago, the Swedish daily newspaper Aftonbladet and the German Bild newspaper investigated independently and came to the same conclusion: instead of tackling the problem locally with recycling partners, used clothes are being sent halfway around the world. A current Greenpeace investigation also confirms this approach. Between July and August, the Spanish branch of the environmental organization attached tracking devices to 29 items of clothing that were suitable for a second life and placed them in containers in eleven Spanish provinces. The sad conclusion: Only 1 out of 29 items of clothing collected is actually reused.
A report by environmental organization Stand.earth revealed alarming findings about the fashion industry’s reliance on biomass fuels as a supposedly “green” alternative to coal and other fossil fuels. The report, called “Biomass Burning: The Fashion Industry’s False Phase-Out,” shows that major global fashion companies are hindering the industry’s transition to true renewable energy sources such as wind or solar, even though sustainable practices are urgently needed in the face of the escalating climate crisis.
Textile recycling
The non-profit organization Bangladesh Apparel Exchange (BAE) organized a roadshow in the first week of December in collaboration with the global sustainability initiative Fashion for Good to pave the way for chemical recycling of textiles in the country. She was supported by the two tech start-ups Circ and Infinited Fiber Company, which specialize in chemical textile-to-textile recycling. The textile recycling toolkit that emerged from the Fashion for Good project “Sorting for Circularity India”, which was launched two years ago, could perhaps help.
The German sporting goods provider Puma also wants to contribute in this area and in the future wants to avoid using recycled plastic in all fan jerseys of the football teams and associations they sponsor. From 2024, the brand’s fan items will be produced using the Re:Fibre textile recycling process.
British fashion designer Stella McCartney presented the world’s first garment made from organic recycling at the COP28 climate summit together with US recycling company Protein Revolution. The jacket is made of recycled polyester, created from plastic waste using artificial intelligence and biological recycling.
innovation
FashionUnited also spoke to the founder of the slow fashion label Luckynelly, Christine Rochlitz, from Berlin, which focuses entirely on textile innovations – such as materials made from strawberries, apples, coconuts, pineapples and cork. All items are handmade and vegan and have already been seen on catwalks in New York, Paris and Berlin.
On the retail side, FashionUnited spoke to Christiane Pfundt, who has been running her Leipzig store called Grünschnabel since 2010. She is a real pioneer because back then, sustainable fashion was still discredited as being ‘eco’. FashionUnited asked her how her store is doing today, how she assesses the retail landscape in Leipzig, and what she would like from the city of Leipzig to make the city center more attractive.
In Bangladesh, by 2028, energy generated by offshore wind turbines could flow into the country’s power grid and provide businesses with renewable energy. A new wind power project aims to strengthen the country’s green energy infrastructure. This is of interest to international fashion companies producing in Bangladesh. The Danish fashion group Bestseller and the Swedish clothing giant H&M are some of the first to invest in the new project. Bestseller aims to raise up to $100 million (around €93 million), which would be the largest sustainability investment in the fashion company’s history.
legislation
In recent years, many non-governmental organizations and citizens have taken legal action against EU governments and multinational companies for either failing to sufficiently reduce their greenhouse gas emissions (so-called “climate change lawsuits”) or for impressing consumers with environmental or sustainability claims lead astray. In this background article, guest authors from Edson Legal explore why the fashion industry should take environmental lawsuits and future proposed environmental legislation seriously.
In addition, an agreement was reached on the ban on the destruction of unsold clothing in the EU: Larger retailers will no longer be allowed to destroy unsold clothing in the EU in the future. Negotiators from the European Parliament and the EU states agreed at the beginning of the month that the EU Commission could extend the ban to other products in the future. According to the information, there are exceptions for small companies; for medium-sized companies a transition period of six years. In principle, the ban should be applied two years after the regulation comes into force.