SUPPLY CHAIN -
The Responsible Sourcing Network (RSN), a nonprofit dedicated to ending human rights abuses associated with the raw materials found in everyday products, today released a new report, Cotton Sourcing Snapshot: A Survey of Corporate Practices to End Forced Labor. The report includes survey results and ratings of 49 companies in the apparel and home goods industries reflecting steps companies are taking to identify risks and establish procedures to prevent cotton from Uzbekistan picked with forced labor from entering their supply chains.
STAKEHOLDER TRENDS AND INSIGHTS -
The Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP), with the help of dozens of prominent retailers, designers and NGOs from the UK clothing industry, on Tuesday launched a new campaign aimed at reducing encouraging Brits to find new appreciation for their unwanted clothes.
CIRCULAR ECONOMY -
Music producer and entrepreneur Pharrell Williams announced last weekend at New York Fashion Week a new partnership with denim label G-Star Raw to create a line of jeans made with plastic collected from the oceans.
"The oceans need us now," Williams said as he announced the collaboration between G-Star and his textile company, Bionic Yarn, which Williams co-founded in 2010 to produce fabric from recycled plastic. The new collection, "Raw for the Oceans," which will be the first denim collection to incorporate marine plastic, will debut in stores and online on August 15.
SUPPLY CHAIN -
Irish retail giant Primark, which operates across the UK and across Western Europe, today joined the growing number of brands committing to eliminate all hazardous chemicals from its supply chain as part of Greenpeace’s global Detox campaign.
SUPPLY CHAIN -
This post first appeared on CSRwire's TalkBack blog on January 7, 2014.This is part two of the Creating Sustainable Apparel Value Chains series. Read part one: Transforming the Industry.
SUPPLY CHAIN -
IKEA has expanded the use of sustainably sourced cotton in its products to 72 percent, up from 34 percent in 2012, according to a recent announcement.The furniture company uses around 0.6 percent of all cotton grown around the world, and in 2013 sourced 79,000 tons of cotton from more sustainable sources; it used a total of 110,000 tons of cotton in 2013.
STAKEHOLDER TRENDS AND INSIGHTS -
In the context of the huge market for fast, disposable fashion, H&M’s brand promise to offer quality fashion at the best price might seem like an oxymoron. But the brand is determined to make good on its goal to “provide fashion for conscious consumers” by making quality clothing more widely accessible."We want to make sustainable fashion more democratic," Helena Helmersson, H&M's head of sustainability, told Reuters last week. "We don't aim for sustainability to be a luxury thing.”But are consumers buying it (so to speak)? Not according to several reports that rank brands according to customer perceptions of their ethical practices.
INNOVATION & TECHNOLOGY -
What are the 100 solutions that can bring about a sustainable society? Scandinavian think tank Sustainia has launched its third annual global campaign to find the answers. With a worldwide alliance of companies and organizations, the goal is to identify the world’s 100 leading sustainability projects and technologies across sectors such as food, fashion, energy, smart homes etc. Collectively, the solutions will form the 2014 Sustainia100, a comprehensive guide to state-of-the-art sustainability practices in various industries and regions.
PRODUCTS AND DESIGN -
adidas has announced new advances in how it develops key apparel ranges to reduce waste while maintaining performance and style. Both the Running and adidas by Stella McCartney teams have worked to change the way they make patterns to increase the efficiency of their new product ranges by reducing fabric waste.The company created a short animation, in collaboration with Big Animal Productions, to highlight this conscientious new design and production process:
SUPPLY CHAIN -
This post first appeared on CSRwire's TalkBack blog on December 17, 2013.The ubiquity of the apparel industry is staggering. Everyone wears clothes. The manufacturing of apparel triggers national development and industrialization, jobs and forms of commerce for the sellers of it, and cover and satisfaction for consumers. At three trillion and counting, the global garment and textile industry is responsible for a great deal of progress throughout the world.
SUPPLY CHAIN -
… Or, as Greenpeace refers to its apparent victory: “How to Detox a fashion brand in 14 days, 6 cities and 10,000 tweets.”British luxury fashion brand Burberry has responded to recent allegations by Greenpeace that some of its clothing contains hazardous chemicals by committing to remove all such substances from its operations by 2020.
MARKETING & COMMUNICATIONS -
Hazardous chemicals have been found in children’s clothes and shoes made by major brands including Disney, Burberry and adidas, according to a new report, A Little Story About the Monsters in Your Closet, released yesterday by Greenpeace East Asia.
COLLABORATION & CO-CREATION -
I:CO, a leading global, end-to-end solutions provider for the reuse and recycling of clothing, shoes and other textiles, today launches its first-ever I:CO City initiative with the City of San Francisco. The launch creates a public, private and non-profit infrastructure to make it easy, convenient and rewarding for residents and businesses to recycle textile-related items.In alignment with San Francisco’s goal of zero waste by 2020, I:CO will serve as the lead textile collection and processing partner to divert this waste from landfill and give these items new life.
SUPPLY CHAIN -
What started as a conversation amongst three friends in 2012 soon evolved into a new online retail concept founded on a shared passion to make a difference.Nomadista, a term coined by co-founders Irina Bezsonoff, Marisol Gomez and Luisa Echeverry meaning an open-minded, stylish and socially-conscious wanderer, launched in September with a mission to provide shoppers with beautifully designed products that are responsibly sourced and made, while helping to improve conditions and create opportunities for underserved children in Colombia.
COLLABORATION & CO-CREATION -
H&M has announced a partnership with Civil Rights Defenders (CRD), a Swedish non-profit organization that works to support human rights around the world. The fashion retail giant says it will donate 4 million SEK (~US$609k) to support their work for human rights.CRD says the support is a welcome addition that will enhance the organization’s long-term commitment to human rights.
“We are delighted that H&M has decided to support us in this way. The donation will allow us to fund our ongoing human rights work and in particular to ensure assistance is available for vulnerable human rights defenders who operate in some of the world’s most repressive states,” says Civil Rights Defenders executive director Robert Hårdh.
MARKETING & COMMUNICATIONS -
For those within the fashion industry who have been working for many years to highlight the need for more transparent, traceable and accountable supply chains, the Rana Plaza disaster in Bangladesh was a metaphorical call to arms. The days following the tragedy saw a plethora of articles calling for a more ethical fashion industry and we looked for ways to channel this energy and momentum into lasting change.
MARKETING & COMMUNICATIONS -
Socially conscious outdoor apparel company Patagonia has made its feelings about mass consumption clear in a number of ways — last month, it launched its Responsible Economy campaign, which calls on consumers and businesses alike to rethink disposability for more effective resource allocation; its Common Threads Partnership urges customers to only buy what they need and to recycle their worn-out Patagonia gear through the company’s take-back program; and, perhaps most famously, with its full-page New York Times ad on B
SUPPLY CHAIN -
H&M, the world's second-largest clothing retailer, established a roadmap this week to pay a fair “living wage” to 850,000 textile workers by 2018, citing that governments were not acting fast enough. But some are arguing that H&M should move faster, as well.During the last year, H&M says it has worked on the problem of how to best address wages, both short and long term, on several levels from purchasing practices, supplier practices, workers’ rights to government responsibility.
MARKETING & COMMUNICATIONS -
It’s been a busy fall for Patagonia — the outdoor apparel company kicked off October with the launch of its “Responsible Economy” campaign, which challenges consumers and businesses to think more consciously about disposability and resource allocation, and ended the month by announcing its plans to offer Fair Trade Certified™ apparel, beginning in Fall 2014.
CIRCULAR ECONOMY -
Since appearing on season two of NBC’s Fashion Star, Daniel Silverstein has made a name for himself in the eco-fashion world. According to the New York Times, the fashion industry generally discards 10-20 percent of the fabric used to manufacture apparel, but Silverstein disrupts the paradigm, using design-driven innovation to create a fashion line without fabric waste. We chatted with Silverstein and brand manager Chris Anderson to see what inspires them about designing without waste and where the future of fashion is headed.