Children walk through a rice paddy near textile mills that use the Citarum River to dump wastewater outside Majalaya, Java, Indonesia on Aug. 28, 2018. Ed Wray / Getty Images
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A new report by Fashion Revolution — What Fuels Fashion? 2024 Edition — has found that nearly a quarter of the biggest fashion brands in the world — like DKNY, Tom Ford and Reebok — have no public decarbonization plan.
The report also revealed the brands lacked transparency in several important areas.
“Nearly a quarter of the world’s biggest fashion brands disclose nothing on decarbonisation, signifying that the climate crisis is not a priority for them,” a press release from Fashion Revolution said.
The fashion industry can be highly polluting, wasteful and destructive to the environment. It is responsible for up to 10 percent of greenhouse gas emissions globally — more than international flights and shipping combined. Left unchecked, its emissions could grow to more than twice that amount.
Fashion is the second-largest consumer of water on the planet, and its polluting wastewater is frequently discharged into rivers and streams.
Nearly all textiles — 85 percent — end up in landfills or the incinerator, creating a colorful pile of microplastic– and per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS)-laden waste.
The new report ranked and analyzed 250 of the largest fashion brands and retailers on the planet — those who make $400 million or more — based on the public disclosure of their actions and goals on climate, reported The Guardian.
The researchers looked at 70 separate sustainability criteria, including emissions targets, whether fashion companies used renewable energy to power their facilities and supply chain transparency, in order to come up with a decarbonization score.
The average score of the brands examined in the report was 18 percent, with 13 percent of major brands scoring a zero rating, the press release said. The highest score for 2024 was 75 percent.
According to Fashion Revolution, less than half of the brands disclosed a Science Based Targets Initiative that covered the whole value chain.
The majority of companies — 86 percent — are without a public phase-out target for coal, 94 percent do not have a public renewable energy goal and 92 percent lack a renewable electricity objective for their supply chains.
Just 43 percent of brands practice transparency regarding the procurement of energy for their operations, with even fewer — 10 percent — doing so at the supply chain level.
“Additionally, no major fashion brand discloses hourly matched supply chain electricity use. As a result, big fashion’s zero-emissions claims may be disconnected from grid realities, creating a false sense of progress against climate targets,” Fashion Revolution said. “The fashion industry wants to have its cake and eat it too. Most big fashion brands (89%) do not disclose how many clothes they make annually. Alarmingly, nearly half (45%) fail to disclose neither how much they make nor the raw material emissions footprint of what is produced, signalling the industry prioritises resource exploitation whilst avoiding accountability for environmental harms linked to production.”
Tom Ford, DKNY and Reebok all earned a zero percent decarbonization rating in the report, since they had failed to demonstrate how they would eliminate supply chain emissions, The Guardian reported. Dolce & Gabbana and Urban Outfitters were near the bottom as well, both scoring three percent.
The three highest-scoring brands were H&M with a 61 percent rating, Gucci with 74 percent and Puma with 75 percent.
Just four of the brands met the targets for emissions reductions set by the United Nations.
Not only did many brands get low sustainability scores, just 117 of them had decarbonization targets at all. And 42 of those reported an increase in their value chain emissions in comparison with their baseline year.
The authors of the report called on companies to protect textile workers who were frequently being paid poverty-line wages.
“A transformation on the scale necessary to stop climate change often implies losses of jobs and livelihoods, which is why we advocate for a just transition that ensures the people who make our clothes aren’t left behind,” the press release said. “But as fashion races to reach net zero, our report finds that brands aren’t providing sufficient support for their workers. The majority (96%) of the world’s largest fashion brands haven’t publicly committed to a Just Transition strategy and only 4% of brands disclose their efforts to retain and re- and/or up-skill supply chain workers whose jobs are at risk.”
Additionally, the report found that just three percent of the biggest fashion companies disclosed their efforts to provide financial support to workers who experienced impacts of the climate crisis.
“By investing at least 2% of their revenue into clean, renewable energy and upskilling and supporting workers, fashion could simultaneously curb the impacts of the climate crisis and reduce poverty and inequality within their supply chains. Climate breakdown is avoidable because we have the solution – and big fashion can certainly afford it,” said Maeve Galvin, Fashion Revolution’s director of global policy and campaigns, as reported by The Guardian.
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