“Brands had to overcome several hurdles just to register. [to The Fashion ReModel]”This goes to the heart of business and challenges the way companies traditionally measure success,” Lennon says. “I think the biggest initial hurdle will be understanding how scaling up circular business models can help achieve net zero and science-based targets, looking at financial metrics and identifying a common language for this, defining what success looks like and how quickly you can expect to see a return on investment.”
One challenge is getting brands to disclose the whole picture and not just the positives: According to Fashion Revolution’s 2023 Transparency Index, 38% of brands are transparent about their efforts to develop circular initiatives, such as advanced recycling methods beyond reuse and downcycling, but 88% refuse to disclose their production volumes.
In this climate, are voluntary schemes like Fashion Remodelling enough? EMF has set up a technical advisory group (as yet to be named) to represent a wider range of stakeholders and hold brands to account. The project is also supported by multi-stakeholder groups including the Global Fashion Agenda, British Fashion Council, Textile Exchange, Wrap, Fashion for Good and Business for Social Responsibility (BSR).
Lennon says the EMF is under no illusions: the project is just a starting point, and much more needs to be done to solve fashion’s sustainability problems. “The demonstration project is not meant to solve everything at once, but to get started, build trust, show other actors in the system what’s possible, and raise the minimum standards over time,” she explains. “Of course, we need to scale up and move faster.”
Below, industry experts react to the initiative and share their expectations for its implementation.
Liv Simpliciano, Policy and Research Manager at Fashion Revolution
The fashion industry’s waste problem has disproportionate victims around the world, including in the Atacama Desert in Chile, the Dandora waste dump in Kenya, and the Kantamanto market in Accra, Ghana. While it is essential for major fashion companies to prioritize circularity, it is crucial to recognize that this work has long been underway in waste-receiving countries. Affected stakeholders with lived experience must be at the heart of these discussions or they will fail. Significant wealth transfers are essential to direct resources to waste-affected host communities, mitigate existing damage, and build resilience. Circularity efforts that do not acknowledge and redress past damage will only reinforce the status quo.
Mostafiz Uddin, Founder and CEO of Bangladesh Apparel Exchange
It’s good to see more attention being given to this issue, but we need to be careful not to do too much and not enough. Brands are under a lot of pressure right now, and their current business models require them to keep increasing sales to stay competitive. Large-scale resale is not that profitable as it stands. This initiative is currently lacking in detail and practicality, but it is clear that a joint effort is needed. Brands cannot achieve this alone, as they have no control over the human ecosystem. A broader approach is needed, including national governments and the United Nations.
Vanessa Balboni-Halik, Founder and CEO of Another Tomorrow
A clear commitment to decouple a viable economic future for fashion from increased production is essential. There are precedents for this kind of transformation, notably in the automotive industry, where both resale and service or repair account for significant revenue across major brands. I want to start with a concrete question: Taking 2023 as the base year, how can each brand make the same amount of profit by starting with a 20% reduction in the production of new clothes? A huge amount of waste comes from misproduction, the manufacture of clothes that practically no one buys. Addressing this is a key part of the equation, and not doing so is a tragedy at a time when we continue to waste resources and we are well beyond the limits of the planet. In some ways, addressing this root cause is harder than building new business models and designing for circularity, because it requires deep data-based innovation in industrial supply chains.
Faith Robinson, Head of Content, Global Fashion Agenda
One of the biggest barriers preventing fashion from existing in a circular economy is the complexity of the collaboration models needed to support new business models. Global Fashion Agenda has also learned from its circularity work in Bangladesh, Vietnam and Cambodia that it is important to respect the nuances of each local situation and not assume a “one-size-fits-all approach” when applying circular systems to different parts of fashion’s global value chain. Waste sorters in the informal sector are circular economy experts and key stakeholders; their insights need to be acknowledged as fashion refines its strategies.
Graham Forbes, Global Plastics Campaign Leader, Greenpeace USA
Time will tell whether this initiative leads to meaningful corporate and government reform, or becomes another way to highlight the industry’s reliance on fossil fuels and complicity in the global plastic crisis. The biggest barrier is greenwashing – the extent to which participating brands rely on unsubstantiated sustainability claims and false solutions like recycling, or take meaningful steps to move away from fundamentally broken business models. This initiative needs to go beyond marketing departments to deliver real corporate reform and public policies that prioritize reuse, redesign, rent, resell, repair and remake. They already have the answers; they just need to act on them.
If you have any comments, questions or feedback, please email us at feedback@voguebusiness.com.
