Several fashion organisations, including Fashion Roundtable, the secretariat for the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Textiles and Fashion; sustainable
Though recycled, upcycled and pre-owned fashion has never been more accessible, a new report by the ecommerce company reveals gaps between consumer values and and how people actually behave when it comes to sustainability.
Out of the 2,500 consumers surveyed in the report, 60 percent consider transparency important, but just 20 percent actively seek out information from brands before purchasing. Further, 53 percent believe brands’ ethical labor policies are important, but only 23 percent investigate policies themselves. And while 58 percent of consumers believe they should know the materials used in a garment, only 38 percent actually do.
Notably, when identifying a single word to associate with sustainable fashion, consumers most commonly chose “guilty,” and rarely used the word “fun.”
The search for fashion supply chain transparency
How can brands and retailers overcome traceability challenges to map exactly where their raw materials are coming from?
The fashion industry s notoriously long, fragmented and opaque supply chains can conceal human rights and environmental abuses. The Modern Slavery Act 2015 was introduced to try to make companies responsible for ensuring their supply chains were free from exploitation, but it was not until last month that the government announced financial penalties for those that fail to comply (box below).
The government s action follows a December BBC exposé of the forced labour of Uyghur Muslim people in the cotton industry in the Xinjiang region of western China. Several UK retailers, including Marks & Spencer, Next, and Tesco, banned the use of raw cotton from Xinjiang as a result.