Textile Exchange’s Materials Benchmarks Find Slow ‘Progress to Preferred’
The fashion industry may be ramping up its adoption of so-called preferred fibers, which is to say raw materials that result in improved social or environmental outcomes, but it still has a “long way to go.”
That’s the conclusion of Evonne Tan, data and technology director at Textile Exchange, which released on Tuesday two materials benchmark data reports, one focusing on brands and retailers and the other on suppliers and manufacturers.
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This is the third “cycle” of assessments since 2015, Tan told Sourcing Journal. Featuring the responses of 397 participating brands and retailers and 52 suppliers and manufacturers, more than half of whom are Textile Exchange members, they make up the sector’s largest peer-to-peer comparison initiative when it comes to the state of materials.
While getting a bird’s eye view of every single company “under the sun” would be next to impossible, Tan admitted, homing in on the biggest companies can provide a “signal” of their overall direction of travel. “This is where the trends are happening,” she said. “We’re primarily looking at the top global fashion brands..and then we’re also simulating that for the suppliers.”
Where momentum is gathering is somewhat hazy. In the case of brands and retailers, 95 percent of those surveyed said they have incorporated a raw materials sustainability strategy and/or ad-hoc activities into their business operations. The data also showed a growing awareness of the importance of leadership buy-in, with 67 percent of respondents reporting that the highest level of operational accountability for integrating the company’s raw materials sustainability roadmap was at the C-suite level.
Progress toward addressing climate impacts, a mounting concern on the global agenda, particularly with the latest round of United Nations climate talks coming to a close this week, is slightly more muted, with 64 percent of participants having set science-based targets for climate and only one-third (33 percent) who said they signed up with the UN Global Compact, a non-binding agreement to adopt sustainable and socially responsible policies. A middling 63 percent say they are conducting risk assessments for climate.
There is also a need for greater movement to “do more with less.” While 80 percent of respondents said they were increasing existing products and materials use through service-based business models like resale, rental and repair, just over half were working to reduce the use of virgin raw materials, suggesting a need for the industry to “rethink value creation.”
Traceability fared the worst, with 79 percent of participants not knowing the origin of their raw materials. Improving visibility to the country of origin, the report noted, is “foundational” to managing risks and flagging opportunities for impact reduction, not to mention an increasingly common requirement within various reporting and disclosure frameworks. “Progress to preferred” likewise showed room for improvement, with participants’ uptake volumes of plant-based, synthetic and man-made cellulosic fibers averaging at 52 percent conventional fibers, 35 percent preferred fibers and 13 percent recycled fibers.
“We definitely encourage the industry to move toward where there are sustainability systems, standards and initiatives that are in place to [acquire] those kinds of preferred sources,” Tan said. “To meet 2030 timelines [that many brands and retailers have], the adoption rate needs to increase over the next couple of years.”
Suppliers and manufacturers run up against many of the same bottlenecks as buyers. Though most respondents said they have incorporated their raw materials sustainability strategy into the core of their business operations, nearly half do not yet conduct risk assessments related to these materials. Some 26 percent have made science-based targets for climate, with the same proportion participating in the UN Global Compact.
Respondents are also taking initial steps toward “recognizing ‘slow growth,’” the report said, meaning that a shift is still required to move away from the traditional growth-driven model, which is based on exponential increases in production and consumption volumes, as well as the spiraling depletion of natural resources, to the growing use of existing products and materials and the incorporation of textile-to-textile post-consumer recycled content.
A little over half (48 percent) of those surveyed reported having set qualitative goals to help them achieve circularity targets, while only 28 percent said they have specified SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound) goals regarding the same. Thirty-eight percent said they plan to reduce or eliminate non-renewable virgin materials, and 33 percent said they are investing in closed-loop processes to optimize efficiency and ensure that resources are not wasted. Roughly half of the participating companies are involved in collecting and sorting waste to support recycling operations.
“Progress to preferred” didn’t swerve too far from the brand and retailer numbers, with uptake volumes averaging at 43 percent conventional fibers, 52 percent preferred fibers and 5 percent recycled fibers. And in the case of some of the most common fiber types, such as cotton and polyester, conventional practices still dominate, indicating that “significant progress is necessary to transition the use of conventional synthetic materials to preferred alternatives,” Tan said.
The impending tsunami of legislation is likely to change many of these trajectories for the next cycle of benchmarks, with tracing to origin “definitely a big one,” she said. “It is inevitable. Working in transparency, this is a topic that a lot of brands are really interested in pushing and driving forward.”
A key takeaway Tan wants readers of the reports to leave with is that they shouldn’t wait till data is perfectly in place before they act. Though gaps may abound, waiting for all the information to arrive will render companies “too late” when time is of the essence. According to calculations by Textile Exchange, the Boston Consulting Group and Quantis, for instance, the industry risks facing a 133 million-ton deficit in preferred fibers if companies fail to act.
“There are still things unknown: we don’t have specific LCA data for every single preferred choice or program in place,” she said. “But [at the same time], there is enough information to guide you to transition those practices and that’s where you need to be moving.”