On the 30th of March 2022 the European Commission presented a package to promote circular business models and empower consumer towards a green deal. Inside an ad hoc strategy for the textile sector that is under close scrutiny given its enormous environmental and social impact. The aims of the EU package include making products more durable, repairable and recyclable, overcoming the model based on the anachronistic logic of take-make-waste, guaranteeing ethical production chains, avoiding the destruction of unsold items and fighting  greenwashing…

The background

Taking a step back, it should be pointed out how the package of proposals is part of the Circular economy action plan. Adopted in March 2020, the Plan is one of the pillars of the Green Deal, the European Agenda for sustainable growth which aims to equip the European Union with an efficient and competitive economy in terms of resources, by guaranteeing in particular zero net greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, development dissociated from the indiscriminate use of resources and taking care of the needs of all people and the planet without geographical distinctions.

The EU package

Let’s try and summarise the most interesting proposals contained in the package presented in March by the European Commission.

Eco-design

It is now well-established: if a product is designed with criteria and attention to ethics (environmental and social) it will have a significantly less negative impact throughout its life cycle. It is estimated in fact that designing an item of clothing affects up to 80% of its impact. For this reason the European Commission has undertaken to define mandatory eco-design requirements aimed at extending the life of products, improving safety requirements and making them easier to maintain, repair, reuse and recycle… In short, to ensure that they are the result of more efficient processes in terms of energy and the resources used.

Greenwashing

The European Commission has structured its actions to counteract greenwashing and social washing, widespread practices of misleading communications that consist in bragging about sustainability strategies without actually putting them into practice in order to improve image and reputation. The package identifies specific information requirements to help consumers understand the environmental impact of what they buy.
On this theme it would be worthwhile to make a comment by raising an exception of no small consequence. Why is there so much talk about the sustainability of individual products and little if anything about the sustainability of the processes that produce these products? It is evidently easier to invest in a single green collection and to affirm afterwards that your company is sustainable.  Too bad that real sustainability is not made up of spot initiatives, but of a wide-ranging strategy that affects the entire organization across the board and often requires a radical transformation of the business model.

Digital passport

The theme is traceability, a key objective that the European Commission intends to pursue by equipping every product with a digital passport. Its purpose is purely to facilitate the different links in the supply chain – manufacturers, importers, distributors, retailers, repairers, regenerators and recyclers – in accessing useful information to improve their environmental performance, extend product life, increase efficiency and the use of secondary raw materials by therefore reducing the need for primary natural resources, saving costs and limiting strategic dependencies.

Fast fashion slow down

By 2030 textile products launched on the European Union market must be made as much as possible with recycled fibres and in compliance with environmental and social rights. Clothing items will have to be durable, safe and reusable… Which will require companies to reduce the number of annual collections on one hand and member states to support the transition with tax breaks for those involved in reuse and repair on the other.
To strengthen the principle – because it would be naïve to set new rules and think that people would respect them in a disciplined way – the European Commission is also working on a surveillance system to check the conformity of products imported with EU requirements.

End of life management

The European Union package could not be without a chapter dedicated to textile waste and the related responsibilities of producers who will have to take care of its correct disposal by minimising the use of incinerators and landfills. Measures will be introduced to prevent and stop the destruction of unsold consumer goods, by providing for transparency and communication obligations for large companies and banning the destruction of certain products.

The legislator and teamwork

“We always welcome initiatives from the legislator on matters relating to sustainability, especially if, as in this case, it engages many different countries with a single, structured package of coherent measures. There is a great deal of voluntary action on the subject of sustainability – observed Francesca Rulli, CEO of Process Factory and creator of 4sustainability® – which, on the one hand is an important sign of the maturity of the system, and on the other it also tells us how necessary the intervention of the legislator is to align standards by clarifying and taking back possession of a role that up to now so far brands, companies and NGOs have played… Legal procedures unfortunately are extremely long that the planet can no longer afford, let alone the market. It is therefore necessary to stay one step ahead by involving all those involved in the change so their efforts convergence towards a common goal: on one side the production chain that the 4sustainability® framework aims to support by implementing sustainability projects and measuring the relative performance; on the other consumers who must be properly informed and empowered to choose responsibly so as to urge brands (and the legislator) to strengthen their action over time”.
In short, teamwork is necessary. The online consultation set up by the European Commission to collect the contribution of the various stakeholders in the sector and build a shared transition path as much as possible seems to correspond exactly with this spirit. Participation is open until the 15^th of May.

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Cotton, wool, polyester… There’s no material that, during its production cycle, does not generate some environmental and social impact, and we need to be aware of these impacts if we want to do our part for a more sustainable fashion. With an upstream premise: giving a sustainability license to raw materials to define with certainty whether one is better than the other literally makes no sense.

Considering that each fiber has its own peculiarities and lends itself to some uses and not others, drawing up a ranking would be impossible, as well as superficial. What can we do then? In what terms can we define the sustainability content of a material? We can simply list advantages, criticalities, and any less impactful alternatives, leaving other aspects such as costs and technical characteristics that clearly deserve a separate discussion in the background.

Never easy to compare

Two-thirds of the product’s impact in terms of water, energy, emissions, waste and land consumption can be attributed to raw materials. This data from the Global Fashion Agenda, the most important international forum on sustainability in fashion, is enough to understand how high the stakes are.

Now, the instinctive choice to reduce the environmental footprint of our purchases, would be to prefer garments made with natural fibers. It’s a pity that the matter is much more intricate…

Taking, for example, cotton, whose cultivation employs around a quarter of the insecticides and herbicides used globally. If it were completely replaced by organic cotton, the primary energy requirement would drop by 62%. On the other hand, replacing virgin polyester with recycled polyester, would cut the use of toxic substances by up to 90%, energy consumption by 60% and emissions by up to 40%.

These numbers tell us how articulated the considerations to be made are and how appropriate, also considering a picture further complicated by the multiplicity of measurement systems in use, that the fashion industry takes up the invitation of the Global Fashion Agenda “to concentrate on the development of new, more sustainable raw materials”.

Fibers’ production

From reading the latest Textile Exchange report for 2019, which is therefore not affected by the effects of Covid19, it emerges that global fiber production amounts to 111 million tons, a quantity that has doubled in the last 20 years and has grown by 2.7% compared to 2018. Continuing on this rate, it would reach 146 million tons by 2030.

Synthetic fibers are the master. Polyester alone accounts for 52% of global production, but also considering nylon and other synthetic fibers it reaches 62.9%.

Cotton is second in the ranking, with a production of 25.7 million tons, of which about 25% can be defined as sustainable. As for artificial cellulosic fibers, namely viscose, acetate, Lyocell, Modal and Cupro, we are in full swing: up to 1990 about 3 million tons were produced per year, rising to 7 million tons in 2019.

Focus on wool and cotton

To better understand the pros and cons of the different raw materials from a sustainable perspective, let’s focus on two textile fibers that are among the most used and familiar to consumers too: wool and cotton.

WOOL

The main environmental advantage of wool is that it’s natural, renewable and completely biodegradable resource. However, working with wool has some limits to keep in mind. First of all, in the washing phase, because the essential steps to purify the wool and eliminate waste require a large amount of water and chemicals.

Intensive livestock farming contributes to aggravating soil degradation, accelerating the desertification process of geographical areas already affected by frequent waves of drought.
Furthermore, despite being a natural fiber, wool also has an impact on climate change. In fact, methane and nitrous oxide deriving from animal waste are greenhouse gases.
From a purely environmental dimension to the ethical one linked to animal welfare, the step is short. How do we know if our sweater was made without mistreating animals? And what are the sustainable “alternatives”?  we can identify three great families.

Organic Wool

It comes from farms where the animals are left free to move, fed with organic feed and treated with natural methods, without the indiscriminate use of antibiotics. The main reference is the set of five fundamental freedoms of the animal codified in 1979 by the Farm Animal Welfare Council (FAWC), the most widespread certification scheme, the Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS).

Responsible wool

The best-known certification is called RWS (Responsible Wool Standard), it was developed by Textile Exchange and relies on the concept of chain of custody: if we notice the RWS brand on the label of our sweater, this means in principle that the steps of production have been certified. Similar to the RWS certification, because they share the same attention to animal welfare, there are other schemes verified through third-party audits, such as the New Zealand ZQ, Nativa, Schneider, SustainaWool and others.

Recycled Wool

More than recycled wool, we should technically speak of regenerated wool, that is made with raw materials obtained from the reuse of waste with an identical destination to that of its “first life”. There are two great advantages in terms of sustainability: the need for virgin raw materials is reduced and the dyeing phase is avoided, with all the foreseeable savings in water and chemicals that it brings with it. As reference certification schemes, we mention among others, GOTS and Recycled Claim Standard (RCS).

COTTON

When we have to choose a baby romper, a set of sheets or a t-shirt, grandma’s advice is always the same: check on the label that they are made of pure cotton. We all agree on the properties of this natural fiber, fresh, breathable, resistant and hypoallergenic.
But what about sustainability? Being a natural fiber, cotton is biodegradable, it decomposes on average in a couple of months, and this is precisely one of its greatest environmental advantages.

Promising is also the possibility of reusing production waste, for example to create sound-absorbing or insulating materials used in construction. We have already mentioned in part about the cons. Conventional agricultural practices make extensive use of chemicals to accelerate the growth of cotton plants, harmful products for human health that also contribute to soil depletion. And then there is the immense waste of water caused, even before cultivation needs, by obsolete water management systems.

A terrible chapter is also that of the exploitation of child labor and forced labor: millions of people employed in the cotton fields without any kind of protection.
Sustainable alternatives, at least on paper, do exist. Let’s try to summarize the main ones.

Organic cotton

According to Textile Exchange organic cotton, certified Organic Cotton Standard (OCS) or GOTS, for example consumes 62% less energy and 71% less water than traditional cotton. The difference is manly in the cultivation phase, because among other things, GMOs are banned, the seeds are not treated with chemicals and pests are kept away through natural methods, rather than using herbicides and pesticides.
The second large family is represented by recycled cotton, whose production has a significantly lower impact because it does not require the use of virgin fiber but uses only pre-consumer (i.e. production waste) or post-consumer (i.e. discarded clothing materials).
If we want to make sure that a garment is made from recycled raw materials, we can look for the symbol of certifications such as Global Recycle Standard (GRS) and RCS.

Standard initiatives

In addition to certifications, there are also some product-independent initiatives that each brand is free to join to support a more sustainable model. The most popular of all, focused on training farmers, is the Better Cotton Initiative (BCI). Farmers learn to use water more efficiently, to prefer techniques that respect the balance of the soil and natural habitats, to minimize the use of toxic chemicals and to ensure decent working conditions.

Everything is clear?

Cotton is second only to polyester in the ranking of the most common fibers, with almost 26 million tons produced in 2019. About 80% comes from just six countries: India, China, USA, Pakistan, Brazil, and Uzbekistan. India is, in particular, the largest producer of organic cotton in the world, with a growth of 48% in the last year, despite the pandemic. Growth however, which according to several sources is false, because the “organic” label associated with cotton is false.

On the dock is an opaque, if not quite fraudulent, certification system. Consumers are guaranteed the “organic” material of the brands, which are based on official stamps of approval from external organizations. These stamps are in turn based on reports from opaque local inspection agencies, which base their conclusions on a single scheduled annual inspection or on a few random visits. In 2009, India’s agricultural export agency uncovered a large-scale fraud, with entire villages certifying genetically modified cotton as organic. The government promised it would release the digital tracking software next year, but he never did.

The credibility of the inspection agencies, meanwhile, has been destroyed. To the point that the European Union has voted to no longer accept Indian organic exports certified by some international agencies.

Structure the commitment

According to Francesca Rulli, CEO of Process Factory/4sustainability®, the certification schemes have an important function, as long as the upstream checks are carried out with a logic of correctness and transparency and as long as they are part of a transversal commitment to sustainability on the part of the companies. Obviously, it cannot be limited to obtaining a stamp. “The hallmark, if the upstream release process is credible, is what allows us to recognize the sustainability content of a given product. And it has a much more value the more it is integrated into a structured path for the creation of a sustainable production model. The 4sustainability frameworks was created to exactly support this commitment, measuring the performance of companies in the supply chain on all dimensions of sustainability relevant to the sector”.
In short, a systemic approach is needed. The single attribute of a product is a good thing, but not enough to affect the reduction of the impact of production. This is what Rulli tries to “translate” in her book Fashionisti consapevoli. Vademecum of sustainable fashion (Dario Flaccovio Editore 2022) thinking of a wider audience than just professionals.

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A pebble slowly starts rolling down a mountain. It picks up speed, and in so doing it drags other stones and dirt, eventually growing into a landslide that reaches the valley.
It may be an understatement to call the recent bill proposed in the State of New York a mere “pebble”. Introducing obligations for fashion companies to trace and communicate their environmental impact throughout their supply chains, the legislation is bold and far-reaching, with the potential to trigger a true avalanche in the fashion industry.

An innovative project

Legislative projects concerning human rights and environmental due diligence are underway in both the EU and many nation-states – Germany, France, United Kingdom, Australia, among others. Similar to the New York bill, these ambitious proposals attempt to define new responsibilities for brands and big businesses in the fashion supply chain.

The Fashion Sustainability and Social Accountability Act signals an even more important shift, implicating all the aspects of sustainability present in the fashion industry. For example, the bill includes,

• A company’s obligation to map at least 50% of their supply chain, ranging from the selection of raw materials to logistics, and measuring their social and environmental impacts in terms of CO2 emissions, water and energy consumption, chemical substance management, salaries, etc.
• A company’s obligation to publish its production volumes, as well as their consumption of cotton and polyester.
• A twelve-month deadline to identify and involve their suppliers in this mapping of the supply chain, and eighteen months to analyze its impact.

Companies Concerned

The proposed bill would apply to all fashion companies with annual turnovers of over 100 million dollars operating in the State of New York, regardless of their place of origin. Affected companies include Inditex, H&M, Shein … – essentially all the big groups of the fashion sector. Noncompliant companies would be sanctioned with fines totally 2% of their annual revenue, as well as having their names added to a public list of “bad” companies.

The Assembly Bill A8352/S7428 was introduced by Assemblymember Anna Kelles and State Senator Alessandra Biaggi and is supported by a roster of fashion and sustainability NGOs, including Stella McCartney, the New Standard Institute, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the NY City Environmental Justice Alliance. If approved, this bill would deliver the most ambitious legislation ever passed concerning sustainable fashion.

The bill is moving quickly, with the vote taking place as early as spring. And the change that this new legislation will inevitable precipitate will have dramatic effects throughout the fashion industry.

Paris Fashion Week and Copenhagen Fashion Week

On the catwalk, this year’s Paris Fashion Week is pushing star businesses to measure their environmental, social, and economic impacts, a policy already present during the Spring-Summer 2022 season. Participating companies are not, however, obliged to publish their performance data. Still, it is an interesting signal, especially if taken in conjunction with the action plan set out by Copenhagen Fashion Week, where participation is contingent on companies reaching a minimum sustainability score in six areas of interest: strategic direction, design, smart raw materials, consumer involvement, working conditions, and events.

Among these minimum requirements are the commitment against the destruction of unsold items, the commitment to use certified or organic products and reused or recycled fabric for at least half of their collections, the commitment to use solely sustainable packaging and set up zero-waste stands, the commitment to propose samples that have previously been showed or digitalize related activity, ensuring the availability of a list of EU REACH restricted substances, compliance with the most stringent regulations in terms of access to work, health, and safety for employees and collaborators, the adoption of clear policies on internal data and communication with consumers regarding sustainability strategies… The list goes on, including casting criteria for models involved in the fashion shows.

The Importance of the Backstage

Fashion is displayed in its full glory on the catwalk. Companies show the best versions of themselves, and in the past few years, this best version has included more than just aesthetic creativity. Recently, we have seen companies add important aspects of sustainability to their collections such as authenticity, measurability, and demonstrability. In this sense, the backstage counts for more than the show. And by backstage, we meet the incredible efforts taken by companies to develop their production in sustainable ways, as well as the increasingly innovative methodologies that are being developed to ground these efforts. 4sustainability fits into this virtuous context as a hallmark and implementation framework for concrete sustainability projects.

“We have been studying a collect data system for the fashion supply chain for years,” 4sustainability founder Francesca Rulli explains, “which has been applied and continuously updated in response to new evidence. This commitment is based on our deep awareness that no brand can call itself sustainable if its production model is not. And to take on a sustainable model of production, the only road is to map one’s supply chain, slowly involving it, collecting its data concerning environmental and social impacts, in order to then build a pathway for progress together that is monitored across time. 4sustainability was born in this context, involving assessments and supply chain monitoring. This system has been digitalized into the 4s Platform and even includes far-away suppliers. We are thrilled that legislators are finally pushing the industry in this direction, as we will have more opportunities to capitalize on the investments that have already been made and the experiences that we have gained working alongside businesses.”

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by Francesca Rulli

Child exploitation, starvation wages, the denial of human rights… The social issues related to global fashion production are well-known. And yet, too little is being done to resolve these issues at their roots.
That’s not all. Today, we are witnessing troubling environmental phenomena. Let’s look at some of these together to understand why they are an indication that a radical change is urgent especially at the cultural level.

The Atacama desert and its “dunes”

In November 2021, Al Jazeera published Chile’s desert dumping ground for fast fashion leftovers, denouncing the “dunes” of clothing found in Chile’s Atacama Desert. Yes, clothing!
Every year, 59 thousand tons of clothes arrive at the port of Iquique, a city in northern Chile. Some clothes are sold to traders in the capital city Santiago, 1800 km to the South, while many others are smuggled to other Latin American countries. The rest – around 39 thousand tons – are dumped in the desert. Why do they end up in no man’s land? Because no one is willing to pay to take them away.

Africa’s polluted rivers

The pollution of Africa’s waterways is a major and well-documented environmental issue. In August 2021, the charity organization Water Witness International published its report How fair is fashion’s water footprint investigating these problems.
Lesotho’s rivers, for example, are highly polluted with the blue dye used for denim. In Tanzania, water samples collected inside a textile factory indicated a pH of 12, the equivalent of common bleach. And if we consider the fact that this water is used by local communities for food, field irrigation, and hygiene, it’s easy to imagine the kind of damages caused to humans and to the environment.

Amazon deforestation

To understand the fashion industry’s links with deforestation, we need to go to South America, and in particular the Amazon.
According to Stand.earth’s report Nowhere to hide: how the fashion industry is linked to Amazon rainforest destruction, there is a close relationship between the two. A great number of big fashion companies purchase leather from producers and tanneries that are devastating the planet’s lungs. This invasion into the Amazon by the cattle industry is driven by intensive farming practices and the high demand for leather goods, which according to the International Council of Tanners (ICT), is growing.

Beyond the visible

Ecowatch’s article Fast Fashion 101: Everything you need to know demonstrates the disastrous effects of the fashion industry has on our planet that may not be visible to the naked eye. According to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, the sector is responsible for 10% of global CO2 emissions. A significant portion of these emissions are caused by the long journeys clothes currently take from the areas in which they are produced to those where they are sold and eventually disposed.

One issue mostly related to fast fashion is the dying process for cheap fashion products. The toxic mix of chemical substances that is widely used in these processes is, yet again, dispersed into the surrounding environment.

Textile waste: a look at the numbers

According to an article published a couple years ago, textile waste increased by 811% between 1960 and 2015, growing from 1.7 to 16 million tons.
In their 2017 report A New Textiles Economy: Redesigning fashion’s future, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation revealed that the average amount of times that a clothing item was worn before being thrown away has decreased by 36% in the last 15 years. The glaring consequence of this tendency is the exponential increase in waste.

McKinsey’s Style that’s sustainable: a new fast-fashion formula found that clothing production doubled between 2000 and 2014, with a 60% increase in the number of clothing products acquired per capita. With the speeding up of production cycles and the creation of ever new designs, consumers have infinite possibilities to renew their wardrobe. According to some estimates, cheap fashion appears to be the culprit of much of this wear-and-discard phenomenon as their products are trashed after a maximum of 7-8 uses.

Consumer behaviour

Why people conveniently ‘forget’ that child labor made their jeans is a fascinating article by MarketWatch on the selective memory of consumers who learn of the not-so-sustainable origin of the specific item in which they are interested. According to a Ohio State University study, humans activate two mechanisms when presented with emotionally difficult ethical information. On the one hand, there is a tendency to completely forget the issue. On the other, people erroneously remember these unethical aspects as good and morally right.
And then there’s social media pressure and the continuous onslaught of the latest celebrity trends. The constant bombardment of stimuli on the Internet accelerates the fast fashion cycle, making us feel forever behind and obligated to catch up with the latest trends.

A 2017 survey showed how 41% of young people between the ages of 18 and 25 felt the need to wear different clothes every time they left their home. Why? Because every outfit is scrupulously documented on social media and so wearing a piece of clothing more than once is out of the question. Arguable, of course, but these are the real feelings that young people live with.

Turning the tide

If this is really how people behave, and if it truly is the case that even if we are aware of certain issues, we are incoherent in our purchasing choices, then the current responses are insufficient.
I have recently published a book entitled Fashionisti consapevoli. Vademecum della moda sostenibile (Flaccovio Editore), where I try to organize some of my reflections on these questions for a wide audience. If I have managed to bring even one person over to the cause, this effort will have been worthwhile. The data and evidence that is compiled in this book, part of which you find here, are horrifying, unequivocal, and “scream” the urgency of turning the tide! It is a pity that, at the end of the day, we are continuing to do as we have always done.

We must act on two fronts. First, we need to ensure that increasing numbers of people ask themselves the right questions before buying clothes. Second, companies must work together to develop ways to fully inform the consumer. This means equipping consumers with simple tools to understand the difference between a product that is truly sustainable, which means produced by a sustainable brand with a sustainable supply chain, and a product that is made in violation with ethical standards, as well as social and environmental responsibility.
There are many projects in motion that work on these fronts, among which the 4sustainability system which I discuss in the book. The biggest challenge, however, is upstream, and involves slow cultural shifts, changes in our ways of thinking, and a break with the logics of production and consumption… This will take time, but we know the path.

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How can training support brands and supply chains in implementing a system for the elimination of toxic and harmful chemicals in production? What are, in this sense, the feedback from brands and supply chains?

This has been discussed on September 7^th at the ZDHC Progressing to Zero – Going beyond the foundations of Sustainable Chemical Management event. More specifically, the occasion is the panel moderated by Mariella Noto, Senior Implementation Manager of ZDHC, in which Fabiana Morandi, Environmental Sustainability Supervisor of Benetton Group, and Francesca Rulli, CEO of Process Factory and creator of the 4sustainability framework, have set out, respectively, the positions of the brands and those of a service provider that has always been accompanying the fashion supply chain in the implementation of concrete sustainability projects.

The 4s Chem system

“With our 4s Chem protocol, we’ve been supporting for years brands and supply chains in implementing the ZDHC roadmap,” said Rulli. “Training is a key driver to accompany companies on this jouney naturally aimed to excellence, it is the first step to create knowledge and culture, to encourage collaboration among different functions, to support companies in improving processes.

I’m referring to a set of activities – projects and continuous training – which allow to measure results and progress, improving the transparency of the entire value chain. All corporate responsibilities are involved to obtain increasingly qualifying performance: from product development to purchasing, to supplier and stock management … With 4s Chem – and its total alignment with ZDHC – we want to differentiate ourselves from one-off solutions that don’t make it possible to grow over time“.

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The context and regulatory pressures

Since the eighties of the last century, more or less, the role of companies has been redefined due to their impact on the environment and the community. Companies feel the need to integrate into strategy the requests that the community expresses towards them, taking into consideration aspects not only linked to profit and making a coherent report, including qualitative and quantitative information on the effects of their actions and their own ability to generate value.

On a regulatory and financial level, ESG – Environmental Social and Governance measurements acquire an ever greater weight in the Corporate Social Responsibility – CSR concept, meaning the set of responsibilities coming from extended duties of a fiduciary nature that companies have towards stakeholders. A key new element lies in the search for collaboration aimed at fair distribution of the value created and the containment of negative effects on stakeholders.

As regards the so called external pressures, we cannot but mention the most important of all: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, with its 17 objectives (Sustainable Development Goals – SDGs) integrated into a great action program for a total of 169 targets and also included in the Global Compact, the largest international corporate sustainability initiative.

Sustainability report …

Legislators, citizens and the market ask companies to do business with a more ethical and attentive approach to people’s rights, social balance and the environment. Above all, they ask to be informed about the related performances through punctual, periodic and transparent communication, which companies interpret by publishing a sustainability report.

Meant as a product of the reporting process, the report is the document which companies adopt to “tell” their environmental, social and economic sustainability performance according to globally recognized standards designed to facilitate the global comparability of information.

The sustainability report is the tool through which each company communicates its initiatives to protect the environment, its policies towards workers, its relations with the territory and the community … offering a precise, complete and transparent picture of the interdependence among economic, social and environmental factors.

The report also explains how to manage the most relevant sustainability aspects for the company and its stakeholders in terms of values, principles, policies and governance systems, providing for a prospective framework for future commitments and goals.

… and reporting process

In order for the report to provide a picture of such complexity, the process for its preparation must be punctual and accurate, divided into phases that we can summarize as follows.

The commitment to sustainability

The reporting process is effective if the whole company is engaged in its implementation. The starting point is the commitment by the top management, who carry out a sustainability implementation and reporting project and share its principles at all levels of the organization, responding to the challenge of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Materiality analysis: relevant issues individuation

The second step consists in defining the most relevant sustainability issues for the company and its stakeholders, those issues that will be reflected in specific projects and then analyzed in the reporting phases.

The materiality analysis, which is provided for by the main sustainability standards, allows to define a priority scale to refer so as to orient the transformation journey towards more sustainable business models.

KPI identification

Once the material issues have been determined, you should identify the KPIs, i.e. the key indicators for measuring the company’s economic, social and environmental performance. The most widespread sustainability reporting standards include the GRI standard as the main international reference for companies, which use its indicators to collect information within the organization.

Data collection

The step that follows the KPIs’ definition is the data collection from the different functions of the organization, their verification and internal validation according to a process to be built with the responsible functions.

Data collection and performance measurement are closely related to the implementation projects that the company carries out in its sustainability strategy: if projects are not done, there is nothing to measure and report, in fact.

Goal setting and improvement plan

The data collected and the measurement of the performance achieved are analyzed so that the company can reasonably decide where to intervene, defining the goals of its improvement plan and therefore the reference terms on which progress will be measured in later years.

The help from technology

Sustainability reporting must itself be sustainable, which implies the company’s ability to build a solid and replicable data implementation, collection and analysis process over time and to carry it out in the most smart way possible. The method and technology are of great help in this sense.

If carried out with this approach, the sustainability report becomes a powerful tool for institutional measurement and communication towards stakeholders. It’s the main document to report the sustainable development actions implemented over time, it is a reliable guarantee of the truthfulness of the company’s commitment to integrate ethics and business and build transparent and greenwashing-proof measurement systems.

“The biggest but decisive challenge – says Francesca Rulli, Process Factory CEO and Founder – is to simplify complexity by linking reporting to the real implementation of projects. It’s not a question of writing a good book, but of making the measurement of the positive impacts the organization is able to generate transparent. Hence the idea of a software for sustainability reporting designed to innovate in terms of concept and technology a process still today conducted mostly manually, especially by small and medium-sized companies.

To proceed, we needed a valid technological partner and we found this partner in FabricaLab, which had already designed a workflow to support data collection with authorization processes aimed at generating structured reporting. The PC4S platform is the result of a synergy between IT and process skills, a simple but very powerful innovative solution to help companies in the data collection and management process up to the issuance of an advanced sustainability report from all points of view”.

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“There is an implicit aspect to this question that makes the difference”, says Francesca Rulli, CEO and Founder of Process Factory/4sustainability®: “I’m referring to the culture you can breathe in companies on certain issues, starting from the top management. The real challenge lies precisely here, in creating and spreading a corporate culture capable of recognizing the importance that an inclusive, fair and attentive work environment has on the employees’ sense of belonging and their efficiency. Relations with suppliers must also be based on the same logic of correctness and fairness. At the center, always and in any case, there must be the person: talking about sustainability strategy, otherwise, it makes no sense”.

This is a transversal theme that applies to companies in the fashion supply chain and to all private and public organizations, regardless of their sector, size and geographical location. In any case, satisfied and fulfilled workers will be more serene and collaborative citizens.
Everyone has to do their part in this cultural challenge, which isn’t exactly trivial. In Italy, for example, we still suffer a lot from the effects of the contraposition and distance between company management and workers, without really understanding that there must be no prejudices in this game. The ultimate goal is common and unity is always strength. Innovative and far-sighted companies – which are also those who perform better, coincidentally … – have understood this.

To focus on the textile and fashion sector, the business model here is still mostly the traditional one, a legacy of a not too distant past. New generations are called to unhinge this model by orienting the corporate culture and the competition rules to ethics, even more in a district organization such as thatb of fashion in Italy.

The profound changes in the world of work

Recently, we’ve witnessed a truly significant change in the social and economic context.
The family model setting has changed, with greater sharing of roles; the perspective of the work organization has changed, less and less linked to the culture of the so-called permanent job; the perception of the importance of corporate social responsibility has grown; the complexity of the markets has increased as well as the pace of life, bringing out a greater need for reconciliation between work and private life. Furthermore, the new workeforce is increasingly attentive to the qualitative aspects of work, other than to salary.

All this requires us to think of a new work organization characterized by greater flexibility in working hours and spaces, greater collaboration and sharing of objectives, relationships based on trust and empowerment of people, rather than on control.
The concept of remuneration must also be consistently reviewed, in order to consider not only the monetary aspects, but also those of the related benefits and personal fulfillment.

Corporate welfare: beware of abuses

There are only two ways of doing welfare in companies: one that works and one that doesn’t. The difference usually lies in the cultural approach to the project.
Welfare projects that do not work – that no longer work, at least – are usually those decided by the management of companies without a participatory process based on listening, they are those that consider the sphere of services to workers as the only area of intervention, often not adequately communicated and valued within organizations.

The welfare projects that work are those in which the property / management acts as an intellectual sponsor and in which the workers actively and constantly participate; they are those that identify the strategic levers of action in several areas (corporate culture, organization, personal and workplace services, work environment and finance…) and that are adequately communicated and valued.

“The winning projects – Rulli points out – are structured projects: not the spot initiative, not the one-off bonus, but a systemic intervention plan to be carried out over time and measured in order to give it evidence to the market as well as to its own employees.”.

Virtuous examples are not enough 

It was 1946 when Adriano Olivetti brought beauty, culture and well-being to his companies, demonstrating that you can do business by taking care of the people who work there, also thinking about their life outside of work – school, health, continuous training … – and, above all, enhancing talents, giving space to individual and group creativity. All this with a surprising return in development and innovation.

It is a well-known example, among other possible ones, to mean that happy experiences of corporate welfare in our country have existed and are still there today. The real challenge, however, is to move from virtuous examples, linked to visionary and enlightened entrepreneurs, to a production system in which organizational well-being is considered a key factor of productivity which is as such managed in a systematic way, with method and vision.

The social dimension of sustainability

The Brundtland Report, also known as Our Common Future, is a document published in 1987 by the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) in which the concept of sustainable development is introduced for the first time. “Sustainable development – we read – is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs“.

It is clear that, in this sense, sustainability must be understood in its three fundamental dimensions: economic-organizational, environmental and social. Well, the social dimension is considered the most strategic, because without attention to our human capital, in the presence of inequalities and in the absence of social cohesion, economic and environmental sustainability cannot be achieved.

Companies influence their employees, their value chain, customers and local communities and it is therefore crucial that they’re committed to managing these impacts proactively.
Companies can contribute to the design environments and ways of working that stimulate responsibility, belonging and motivation to create increasingly inclusive value chains. They can also collaborate with other companies to team up and therefore have a more consistent positive impact on the community and on the business.
The Consorzio Promozione Filati, which brings together dozens of companies producing knitting yarns, is an excellent example of virtuous approach.

The areas of organizational wellbeing

What are, in practice, the areas in which companies can intervene to introduce or strengthen corporate wellbeing within their organization, in line with the sustainability goals? Let’s see them together.

Culture

By “Culture Area” we mean the deep sphere of the corporate value system. It is the most intangible area and at the same time the most strategic in the company because it inspires and guides the actions of all those who work there. This includes communication policies, social responsibility initiatives, leadership styles, training policies, and the merit system.

Organization

By “Organization Area” we mean that set of rules and processes through which a company carries out its functions and activities. It is an important strategic lever for reconciling private and working life and promoting corporate well-being. This includes smart working policies, flexible hours, part-time policies, holiday and parental leave management policies, and the work shifts management.

Services

By “Service Area” we mean a series of possible initiatives aimed at supporting the worker in the workplace or in their free time. This includes tax and legal assistance services, the delivery of online purchases or clinical examinations at the company headquarters, the handling of paperwork, coaching services, cultural and recreational opportunities, etc.

Finance

By “Finance Area” we mean a financial support system dedicated to people, to support them in particular moments of their life. This includes insurance banking agreements, contributions to the purchase of school books, scholarships for deserving students, meal vouchers in the absence of a canteen service, supplementary policies.

Ambiente di lavoro

By “Environment Area”, finally, we mean the implementation of initiatives aimed at the psychophysical well-being of the worker. This includes attention to the quality of work spaces – welcoming, well-ventilated and well-tempered offices with ergonomic workstations – and the presence of wellness areas such as, for example, relaxation rooms.

People 4sustainability®

Intervening in these areas, according to Francesca Rulli, also means stimulating people’s creativity and aptitude for innovation, which is an essential support to carry on the company’s transformation process towards sustainability: “It is no coincidence that the People 4sustainability® protocol for the growth of organizational well-being is based on the parameters described so far, defining the action plan each company can implement to increase the performance and well-being of resources in a logic of continuous improvement. What are the weaknesses and what are the positive aspects to build on? Do people identify with the company and its management? In what terms do they share its sustainability policies? How to measure and monitor the level of satisfaction over time? Putting people at the center means answering all these questions and then translating the priorities identified into smart solutions that qualify the themes of working together as distinctive aggregation factors”.

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The audience

Participants in the virtual event on 24 March included many fashion brands and businesses in the supply chain: fabric dyeing and printing companies, tanneries, shoe factories and service providers that support the textile and leather industry in chemical management.

The program

What is the CMS TIG and how should it be interpreted? Two different interventions by Prasad Pant (South Asia Director of ZDHC) and Klass Nuttbohm (Implementation Director of the ZDHC Implementation HUB) made clear the various implementation aspects of the document and the Supplier to Zero Program, both developed for implementing the ZDHC roadmap to which the Chem 4sustainability® protocol also conforms.

One of the meeting’s highlights was the panel discussion which opened the works entitled The need for chemical management in textile and leather manufacturing. Prasad Pant moderated the debate among prominent personalities such as S. Karhtick, Program Manager and SCM of C&A, Dunstan Weragala, Manager of Hayleys Fabric PLC, Elisa Xu of Smart Shirts and Francesca Rulli, introduced to the public as the pioneer of chemical management and sustainability in Italy.

A shared standard for good chemistry

To what extent is the proper management of chemicals in production a priority for the fashion industry? Francesca Rulli returned to a theme that has always been dear to Process Factory, namely the need to adopt a common standard to create a measurable and comparable supply chain evaluation system. In this way only, indeed, it will be possible to measure and identify the necessary improvement actions, “rewarding” the most deserving suppliers as they are more committed to sustainability and good chemistry.

“In the last five years, attention to chemical management and sustainability has grown significantly, so much to be included in the vendor rating systems of some important fashion & luxury brands”, Rulli explained. “However, the number of realities applying a true strategy of sustainability and reduction of their own environmental impact is still small compared to the total volume of production and this means that the cost lever is that, unfortunately, still weighs more”.

Expectation for coming years is to see an acceleration towards sustainability and therefore a more equitable distribution of value such as to encourage widespread and continuous investments in innovation, also applied to sustainable chemistry.

Why should the supply chain adopt a private protocol like 4sustainability®?

“The companies in the supply chain receive increasingly strong pressures from the market, with different and sometimes contradictory requests for chemical compliance“, Rulli replied. “Implementing the ZDHC methodology through a single protocol such as Chem 4sustainability® means building a management system that adopts all the ZDHC tools and which at the same time allows to respond to market demands with a single investment, once and for all”.

The 4sustainability® system is in fact conceived and continuously updated in line with ZDHC standard and the brands’ inputs. The ultimate goal is to help the supply chain manage chemicals in production while respecting human health and the environment through an implementation process based on the process evaluation and the elimination of risk in the input phase.

The necessary dialogue between brands and supply chain

In Italy, over 160 companies already apply the Chem 4sustainability® protocol and constantly measure implementation KPIs to define improvement actions. This approach also allows the sharing of the best experiences and communication to the market, promotes innovation and the elimination of toxicities from production cycles.

Service providers, with their constant support to companies, play a key role. Asked about this by Prasad Pant, Francesca Rulli underlined how the matter is new for many. “For us – she said – joining the ZDHC Foundation by actively contributing to the work of the program was a great opportunity. Exchanging views allows the various stakeholders to grow together and share knowledge and best practices. The role of the service provider as a hinge between brands and the supply chain becomes fundamental in this sense. Direct experience on many processes and companies with different situations and cultures, in fact, refines skills and stimulates developing of solutions tested on the market. Solutions which are always in line with the expectations of ZDHC and the operators who adopt its approach”.

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Advantages are also evident for brands and companies in the fashion sector, for which tracing internal processes, monitoring suppliers and involving them in the business model transformation towards sustainability can prove to be crucial.
Choosing traceability, for a brand, means being able to verify the compliance of each stage of production with national regulations and international standards; it means improving one’s reputation, strengthening relations with stakeholders and being more reliable; it means efficiently managing suppliers and reducing the impact of risks from the complexity, fragmentation and dislocation of the production chain.

The barriers to transparency

An implicit element of traceability is transparency, i.e. the choice of making the information on the product and processes available to all the above actors, taking care that they are clear, accessible, understandable and comparable.
The challenge is demanding for several reasons. The first, which we’ve already introduced, consists in the widespread and growing fragmentation and complexity of the production system, made up of plants and operators located in various parts of the world and therefore subject to different rules and standards at regional, national and international level.

Another problem is represented by technological barriers and mainly affects the links in the supply chain that operate in less advanced countries. But the technology necessary for the collection and exchange of data and information costs money, even where it is accessible, even for those who can afford it on paper.
Last, but not least, is the issue of privacy and data security, especially those which are subject to intellectual property protection due their business strategic value.

Fashion Revolution’s votes to brands

What is the state of the art? How do fashion companies behave in terms of transparency and traceability? Every year, Fashion Revolution rates the brands’ efforts in this regard.
The Fashion Transparency Index, in particular, measures them on five dimensions (Policy & Commitments, Governance, Tracciabilità, Audit, Spotlight) and weighs the results to get a total score. Well, this score saw an increase of two percentage points in 2020 compared to the previous year, from 21% to 23%.

The traceability rating

As regards traceability, more specifically, the average score was only 16%, compared to a 52% recorded in terms of company policies and commitments. Read together, the two percentages suggest the existence of a still too marked gap between results and good intentions.
On its own, the low percentage on traceability can be explained by the fact that less than half of the 250 brands interviewed disclose information on companies in their supply chain. Only 40% publish Tier 1 supplier lists and even fewer – just 24% – declare which and how many processing plants include wet processing factories. Only 7% appoint raw material suppliers.

The rating for environmental performance

And now we come to the environment chapter of the Fashion Revolution report. 78% of the brands interviewed publish their own sustainability policies on the use of energy resources and the CO₂ emission reduction. However, only 16% give specific information on greenhouse gas emissions produced along the supply chain.

The same trend is also for the water resource management: 52% of brands highlight their policies for a more informed use of water, which in 42% of cases would also be extended to their suppliers. Only 31%, however, calculate the water impact of their plants and just 14% publish the water footprint annually, also considering the wet processing parts of their supply chain.

As for the waste generated during the production phases, the feedback is disheartening: only 4% – 11 out of 250 brands – disclosed the data and only 3% the volumes of products deliberately destroyed.

From a social standpoint, only 6% of brands declare a supplier payment policy within 60 days. 11% say they guarantee labor costs without price renegotiation and 23% a living wage for supply chain workers.

The Planet Tracker survey

Another recent report is that of the non-profit financial think tank Planet Tracker, which offers some good food for thought on the subject.
The study focuses on the water risk which companies in the fashion supply chain are exposed to  – those with wet processing, in particular – and on how this risk impacts on investors. The most interesting part, in our opinion, is that which concerns the brands, the initiatives they should undertake for a more sustainable management of water resources, which means more oriented to traceability.

Planet Tracker’s report is a real call to action towards brands, which have the economic and communicative power to push the business model transformation towards sustainability.
Brands, you can read, should extend supply chain information beyond Tier 1 suppliers, so that investors, financiers and customers can understand the true scale of the environmental costs and risks associated with manufacturing.
They should take greater responsibility for suppliers, through consistent purchasing behavior and a risk-based due diligence approach throughout the supply chain.
Finally, they should devote part of their substantial financial resources to support supplier investments in new equipment and innovative techniques. At the same retail prices, a 0.5% reduction in the brands’ net operating margin (EBIT) would allow for approximately USD 220 million to be recovered for the supply chain.

What to do: the experts’ voice

The numbers – and the numbers’ interpretations – show a pretty clear picture. First of all, it is evident that we cannot speak of true traceability if we stop at the first link in the supply chain. “We can read the data provided by Fashion Revolution and Planet Tracker, among others, as a good start – says Francesca Rulli, CEO and Founder of Process Factory / 4sustainability® – but there is still a long way to go. Traceability, which is a pillar of sustainability, implies the involvement of the production chain in its whole, through know-how, methodologies and supporting tools.

Available options are still few … This is why we decided to include in our sustainability roadmap an initiative designed specifically for monitoring suppliers and collecting the key information for their evaluation. This initiative is called Trace 4sustainability® and consists of a protocol to measure suppliers level by level and select those with the lowest environmental and social impact. The ultimate goal is to build a rewarding system that distributes the value on the most deserving supply chains, thus communicating to the market the transparency of each choice”.

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Knowing how to protect yourself

When the production cost is very low, in any case there is someone who pays and this “someone” is people and / or the environment. In other terms, it is not said that the fashion items we like so much, whether branded or not, are risk-free, meaning produced without the use of potentially harmful chemicals. It’s all the fault of an ever faster fashion, of collections that chase each other to maximize sales and profits. The moral is if I want to make a conscious purchase, I must first inform myself, knowing that, a priori, neither the brand nor the Made in Italy label can completely preserve me from risks.

Let’s start by saying that it’s very likely that chemistry is used to obtain the color fastness to washing, a water-repellent performance or an anti-stain treatment. Have we ever wondered what the effects of these processes are on the environment? How much impact do the factories’ discharges in the sea where we fish or in the rivers from which we draw water to irrigate and what damage do we suffer to our health through the foods we eat and the clothes we wear?

The role of brands, from great accused to active players of change

Greenpeace‘s attacks on the major fashion brands that years ago began to stir the conscience on issues such as the indiscriminate exploitation of resources, the use of child labor, violations of workers’ rights … have brought to light very serious responsibilities and abuses that can be charged, if not directly to the brands known to the general public, to their supply chains, on which at best a facade monitoring was exercised because that was convenient for it to be.

Since the Rhana Plaza tragedy in 2013 – the worst accident ever to hit the textile sector, with over a thousand workers killed in the collapse of the run-down Dhaka plant in Bangladesh – many things have fortunately changed. The conscious cynicism of which many production companies have make them guilty is slowly giving way to sustainability and social responsibility policies many suppliers are also involved in. The idea behind the change is that we must work together to achieve gradual but rigorous objectives that should be binding for everyone. Among these is good chemistry, which consists in the elimination of chemicals that are dangerous to health and the environment from the various production cycles of the fashion industry. It is about those same substances that have been heavily used in the last fifty years due their cheapness and high performance.

On this front, the largest global initiative born in response to the accusations of Greenpeace and other NGOs is Zero Discharge of Hazardous Chemicals – ZDHC, a working table that later became a foundation that brings together the leading international fashion & luxury brands, the most advanced realities in the supply chain, chemical producers, analysis laboratories, research institutes, associations and companies such as Process Factory specialized in supporting businesses in their conversion roadmap to good chemistry and, more generally, to sustainability as a development strategy.

The Made in Italy “warranty”

It is also necessary to shed light on the wording Made in Italy and the tendency to attribute to it an extended meaning of guarantee that it has not necessarily. Let’s say the t-shirt or sweater in our example were actually designed and sewn in Italy. This will be sufficient to write Made in Italy on the label, without obligation for the manufacturer to specify that the raw material, washing, dyeing, etc. were performed on the other side of the world.

Now, if there’re no legal obligations, if there’s no third party that controls, if laws are few and fragmented and each country behaves as it sees fit, I as a consumer will have very little means to make an informed purchasing decision.

I can rely on common sense, of course. And common sense should prompt me a few questions at least. I should ask myself, for example, how is it possible that in the various steps that go from the row material selection to the distribution of the finished garment in stores – by passing through the yarn production and fabric transformation – everyone gains a little and that, at the same time, workers are paid fairly, the factory kept safe, water and energy consumption reduced and the use of toxic or harmful chemicals avoided. There is something wrong, evidently. What is my contribution to the system if I close my eyes, if I just adapt without asking myself what’s the story behind a product and what damage could I receive?

To each his own role

The matter is broad even if we want to limit ourselves only to chemical management, that is to say chemistry used to produce what we wear. Certainly, everyone is called to do their part: the legislator who must pass more advanced and rigorous laws, governments that must apply them, supervisory bodies that must ensure compliance, judiciary that must rigorously sanction any violations and the consumer who must demand to be informed.

Brands and supply chain must work together to eliminate toxic and harmful chemicals to health and the environment from production cycles, possibly relying on recognized protocols such as the 4sustainability® brand aligned with the ZDHC approach. This is an ethical choice on a voluntary basis, of course, but also a business strategy.

In addition to the due respect for current regulations and the more stringent ones to come, there is a growing market share that carries out virtuous processes and sustainable alternatives, committing itself even before Covid-19 intervened to emphasize the system crisis and the need for accelerate towards a direction that is now obligatory: responsible production.

“The protagonist are the consumers, who despite being still little informed on these issues and often lacking tools to understand more, demonstrate a growing sensitivity and the willingness to learn in order to behave responsibly”, says Francesca Rulli, Founder and CEO of Process Factory/4sustainability®. “This means ‘rewarding’ brands that show they really want to clean up their production processes, bringing products with clear, reliable and understandable labels to the store – physical or virtual – and preparing the staff to respond and inform the consumer about the sustainability attributes of the garments, starting with the transparency of the production chain: how were they produced and where, through which steps?”

Tips for shopping

While waiting for all the mosaic tiles to go into their place, let’s give some useful information for an informed purchase even if there is not a well-made label. The first thing to know – we said – is that some substances dangerous for our health are commonly used in the clothes production. Phthalates, for example, are used to give flexibility and softness to rubberised prints: in contact with our skin, they can in the long run alter the body’s hormonal balance.

A huge chapter is that of dyes, which can contain carcinogenic substances such as aromatic amines. Known carcinogens are chlorine – used to “bind” many dyes – and chromium, which is to fix the color on the fabric. Formaldehyde is an irritating gas for the eyes and respiratory tract used to fix pigments in the printing phase, as well as a preservative in the packaging phase. Nickel is also highly allergenic: beware of jeans and dark or very colored garments because it is likely that they contain significant quantities of it.

Obviously, this is not the place to deal with such a broad topic. The point is that prolonged contact with these substances can cause multiple problems, from “trivial” allergic reactions to hormonal imbalances, to cancers of varying seriousness. Moreover, by washing garments these substances partly end up in the water and therefore in the environment, with the imaginable consequences in terms of pollution and the possibility of coming into contact with them again through the food we eat.

“I believe this is enough to make the expression ‘chemical management’ a little less distant from our daily life and a little more interesting, right? It is something – Rulli underlines – that companies and those like us who work with them must certainly deal with to improve production processes in a sustainable perspective, but that every single individual should care about and reward with his/her purchasing behavior. And this not to enrich one brand rather than another, but because our health and that of the planet and the future of our children are at stake”.

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