Fashion professionals puzzle at the Global Fashion Summit: How do we unlock the next level of sustainability?

What was Global Fashion Agenda's (GFA) intention with the theme of the 15th Global Fashion Summit (GFS), ‘Unlocking the Next Level’? The promise was a balanced, evidence-based overview of successful and less successful experiments for a more sustainable fashion sector to learn from for the crucial years ahead. But as often happens with ‘sustainability’, the conversation took a distorted positive form, with a focus on fledgling partnerships and hopeful future scenarios, rather than honest reflections on failed pilots and extinct consortiums. Concrete proposals were rarely linked to industry-wide climate targets and the division of roles - who should solve what part of the puzzle - remained in the middle. New priorities were set, however, and the growing urgency for action was omnipresent in the Danish concert hall.

After visiting the sustainable fashion meeting, FashionUnited takes stock: what exactly is ‘the next level’ and what do fashion professionals need to do to achieve it?

Reality check: Sustainable textiles are also political

The 15th Copenhagen Summit began with a reality check: the sessions and individual meetings on the agenda are as valuable as the outcome of the elections in June (Europe) and November (US). "The industry saw a huge increase in regulation under both Ursula von der Leyen and Joe Biden," said GFA's Marta Inchausti Moya at the kick-off event for invited guests. The EU Textile Strategy, completed on March 2022, set the framework for this, "a signal from the European Commission that textiles would no longer remain under the radar". As many as 16 pieces of legislation currently affect the European textile and fashion sector. How will these still fledgling plans develop if the right-wing trend continues in Brussels and Washington, D.C? In the room of journalists, GFA partners and experts, it gets quiet.

As an industry, focusing on immediate progress was the topic highlighted during the Policy Masterclass that should also emphasise the ‘Global’ aspect of GFS. For instance, Chile has been actively working on a sustainable textile strategy for two years, Ethiopia is pulling the cart in the fight against dumping practices and several ‘Fashion Acts’ are supposed to comes to a head in the US, with goals of achieving what the CS3D (Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive) aims to do in Europe. Regulations in the EU dominate the industry's sustainability plans for 2030, although many are ‘directives’ [not EU laws] that have yet to be fleshed out locally.

According to Lars Fogh Mortensen of the European Environment Agency, therein lies a potential pitfall. He noted: "Without a global approach, companies have to work in different, unequal policy environments. For example, countries now have some freedom in how they want to collect textile waste. Politicians often want to show their best side; they think they have to make their own rules. My advice to them is: follow the guidelines and implement EU legislation."

Product passports on the way

CSRD (Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive) and EPR (Extended Producer Responsibility) were the talk of the day, but on GFS's ‘action stage’ we were also already seeing early examples of product passports (DPP) at mid-sized brands; by 2027, every fashion product must have an identity encoded in a square QR code [rectangular variants can store less information], that allows consumers to access relevant data on the production process, sustainable or otherwise. Innovator TrusTrace has already designed such a passport for over 60 fashion brands including Marimekko, Kappahl and Filippa K, whose VP of product & sustainability Anna Berne said on the panel: "It started with us not reaching the transparency targets we had set for ourselves. We wanted to track the journey of our materials all the way to the start at the farms, with a pilot that was scalable for different materials, locations, and data points."

At Filippa K, the brand enlisted the help of GS1. The QR code, placed in the neck label for the highest chance of interaction, is meant to encourage consumers to make sustainable choices through the display of "information on farming practices, animal welfare, social aspects, environmental impact, care instructions, resale, and other circular options". The mockup will become a reality for all South African wool items in the FW24 collection. TrusTrace CEO Shameek Ghosh lists the benefits for brands embarking on such passports now: compliance, risk management and a foundation for a circular business model. With the growing range of parties like TrusTrace, brands both big and small can get started.

Next steps towards circular textiles

Such concrete examples of what does or does not work are scarce at the Summit, but from the panels and conversations with innovators, brands and experts attended by FashionUnited, a picture emerges of what needs to happen to get the transition for textiles up to speed.

The foundations for recycling materials have been laid, but techniques for complex composites are still far from reaching scale. These are crucial for preserving fibre quality - and further preventing hundreds of millions of tonnes of textile waste from being dumped in the Global South. Logistics partnerships are essential to bring products back into the chain after use for circular applications. Data tools allow brands and producers to plan better, to reduce overproduction. Offtake commitments for recycled fibres help achieve economies of scale and avoid disastrous bankruptcies like Renewcell.

It is important for parties to agree on standards for sustainable design, data points and quality for reporting, and the hierarchy of sustainable fibres [such as cotton versus polyester], so that progress is easier to compare and more time and energy can be devoted to actual material challenges [water, chemicals and microfibres]. Steps should be taken in biofabrication and regenerative agriculture so that the growing luxury leather market can go hand in hand with a reduction in carbon-intensive, animal-based materials. The actual contribution of textiles to carbon emissions needs to be quantified for a common path to drastically reduce them.

Brand-supplier partnerships must become closer and more long-term, based on shared knowledge [via supplier-centric data tools] and risk, and a fair distribution of rewards, so that together they can explore and test the core [capacity, supply-demand, pricing] of future-proof material mixes. Involving indigenous communities, who are closer to nature and climate change impacts and possess a lot of knowledge and skill, is key, as is introducing living wages [inflation included] and binding support for collective bargaining agreements. Finally, sustainability needs to reach mainstream consumers, with more awareness from purchase to deposit. Circular retail models and education are cornerstones of that behavioural change.

While the list of to-do's is overwhelming, most initiatives start with brands' data management. David Almroth, head of expansion at GS1's Swedish branch said: "Eight out of 10 companies feel a need for more data due to emerging legislation. If you want to build that as a company, you need to map out your situation: what data do we need, where is it in the organisation and who is responsible at those points, how can we make it digital and keep track of it. Start small - then involve other parties as well, because eventually you need to be able to share your data upstream and downstream."

Profitable sustainability - a dominant belief

Naturally, the Summit should also address who will pay for all these changes. The floor also belonged to Adam Karlsson CFO H&M Group, who described the well-known fashion chain's sustainability investments as"basic corporate valuation". He explained: "A company has to be able to guarantee future cash flows. That is why we like to be a driver of the required investments. By the way, sustainability is also a good short-term business. Many issues are about improvements in resource management, which also drive business results. In 2023, we reported a scope 1-2 reduction of 25 percent and scope 3 reduction of 22 percent while continuing to strive for profits and growth." He spoke highly of GFA's wind energy project in Bangladesh [one of the largest textile markets] and the Future Supplier initiative - two renewable energy projects that equate the P's of profit and planet. His view says a lot about the way major fashion players look at sustainability. It also explains why the topic of ‘degrowth’ is not on the Summit's agenda.

After the Collective Finance panel, FashionUnited spoke with Emelyne Cheney, director of Fashion Sector Initiatives at Lestari Capital, who said: "The sector's transition to net-zero is multidimensional and requires different financial instruments. Sustainability bonds can help brands finance emission reductions in their own operations, venture capital can help the sector support innovations for alternative materials, and because of its reliance on land use, the fashion sector can participate well in environmental [regenerative agriculture] markets, which will be as big as carbon markets in three to five years thanks to regulation and companies‘ voluntary net-positive targets."

Addressing scope 3 emissions [beyond a company's own], is where the need for collective finance models becomes critical. Cheney continued: "The scale of investment required is huge [two trillion, according to Apparel Impact Institute] and fragmented action will have no impact. Brands, retailers, manufacturers and material producers share a common but differentiated responsibility to cover the cost of transition. Collective funding mechanisms, where contributions are somewhat proportional to sales and margins, can ensure equity. By joining forces, companies can make larger capital investments less risky and achieve the scale of financing needed to transform the industry."

There is one problem in the financial pitch for sustainable investment: if you zoom out far enough, it doesn't make sense. Indeed, "unlocking the next level" of circular textiles includes steps that make little business sense - or there is not enough time to identify and implement the perfect business plan, which many parties are now waiting for anyway. Collecting and sorting low-value post-consumer textile waste brings little return, a pilot sometimes leads to new questions rather than a commercial product, and after pricey attempts by brands to change behaviour, consumers often opt for cheap anyway.

The duality of finance as a problem and opportunity for the textile transition is perhaps most evident when Unilever's Paul Polman took to the big stage. The former Unilever chief executive has been steering The Fashion Pact since 2019. In his talk, he said: "The industry faces bigger threats than it realises. The speed at which we create problems exceeds the speed at which we apply solutions." He referred to disruptions in the supply chain, such as factories closing and the rise in material prices [due to extreme weather]. The industry's inability to respond quickly to scale leads to billions of euros in unforeseen costs. Polman therefore argued for regenerative leadership - a piece of humility in leaders who are willing to "give more than they take".

Not much later, whether consciously or not, he explained why the chances of such a breakthrough are slim. The millions of people who enter management courses every year learn mainly to recognise the business case in new initiatives: what will it deliver? Polman himself called investing in sustainable textile solutions "the biggest business opportunity of the century". The assumption is that sustainability leads to business results, but especially in the area of infrastructure, this is far from always the case.

The message during GFS is loud and clear: stop identifying problems and mapping risks and take sustainable steps now. That "unlocking" sustainability takes so long - and this is an uncomfortable panel topic - is also due to human constraints. Polman spoke of greed and the lack of will and care. Delaying sustainability is also about perfectionism, risk aversion, social pressure in business, and the inability to foresee the urgency of problems in the future. It is 2024: a thriving knowledge economy and breakthrough technology are on the industry's side. The best KPIs to measure sustainable progress are decisiveness and guts.

This article originally appeared on FashionUnited.NL. Translation and edit by: Rachel Douglass.