On 23rd January 2024, the IMPACT+ Network hosted its first symposium at Northumbria University in Newcastle Upon Tyne. The event brought together interdisciplinary delegates from academia and industry, assembling world-leading expertise in forensic science, soil ecology, sustainable fashion, and air quality management. The symposium’s primary objective was to discuss, identify, and co-create solutions to the challenges related to measuring the environmental impact of fashion across the industry’s value chain. Participants advocated for more robust reporting metrics, greater transparency, and increased accuracy in the supply chain’s environmental impact measurement of products, processes and behaviours.
IMPACT+, which stands for Index Measures Promoting Assessment and Circular Transparency in Fashion, is one of three £2 million networks funded by UKRI under The Circular Fashion and Textile Programme: Network Plus. This initiative embodies a decade-long commitment to drive sustainable transformation in the fashion industry. Its aim is to enhance the collation, analysis, and assessment of environmental impact across the fashion and textile sector. Dr Alana James leads the IMPACT+ Network team from Northumbria University alongside colleagues Professor Anne Peirson-Smith, Professor Anil Namdeo, Dr Kelly Sheridan and Dr Miranda Prendergast-Miller. Dr Thomas Stanton from Loughborough University and Dr Matteo Gallidabino work collaboratively on this initiative.
As outlined in the last blog post, the effects, processes, and behaviours of the fashion and textile industries have been heavily scrutinised for environmental and social implications in recent years. The industry’s linear ‘take-make-trash’ product life cycle raises environmental concerns, including energy consumption, chemical use, water pollution, waste generation, carbon emissions, and challenges in meeting sustainability criteria. The industry has primarily focused on reducing carbon emissions, often overlooking the other detrimental environmental and social impacts of the linear approach.
Currently, the fashion industry relies on self-reported and unconfirmed data from brands. Relying on potentially incorrect and misleading information, which can lead to greenwashing and misdirection when assessing sustainable efforts and metrics.
Symposium attendees actively participated in two workshop sessions discussing current issues, barriers, and opportunities for collaborative action. The day’s exploration focused on investigating five main themes: Transparency, Economics, Environmental Measures, Policy and Governance, and Cross-disciplinarity.
Radical Change for 2024 by Carry Somers
During the morning, there was a keynote talk from Carry Somers, founder of Fashion Revolution and trustee of Fashion Revolution Foundation. Carry discussed the need for the fashion and textile industry to move away from assumptions to evidence-based strategies and shift from vague short-term goals to measurable long-term impacts. Moreover, Carry highlighted the need to address the prevailing myths and misconceptions that prevent accurate assessment of the sector’s impact.
For instance, there is a common misperception that natural fibres have no detrimental environmental effects due to their biodegradability. However, eXXpedition Round the World research revealed that cotton is the most common fibre type found in water samples, indicating that natural fibres do not just “disappear” and biodegrade in nature due to the chemical processes involved in their manufacturing. Also, it is necessary to understand better what happens to chemicals embedded in natural fibres once they finally degrade in the environment. There was a focus on thoroughly considering and understanding the impact of the entire clothing cycle, from production to end-of-life and disposal across the value chain.
Carry outlined that brands must collect their primary research before making sustainable claims. The problematic practice of using secondary data, often based on small data sets and scaled up for the whole industry, can be misleading. There is a crucial need for current and accurate information to be readily available in the sector without being restricted by paywalls. Withholding such results prevents the fashion and textile industries from successfully and collectively addressing and lowering the environmental impact of their processes and behaviours. Rather than working in separate silos, emphasising co-design and collaborative approaches in the implementation phase is critical for bringing about change and reform.
Fashion Revolution’s Fashion Transparency Index is a tool to incentivise fashion brands and retailers to be more transparent and share information on their social and environmental policies, practices, and impacts across their operations and supply chain. Recognising the need for transparency allows systemic transformation in the global fashion and textiles industries. In the 2023 results, luxury brands showed the most substantial increases in the Fashion Transparency Index, with one brand attaining an average score of 80%. According to Carry, these brands’ and retailers’ scores have significantly improved due to releasing information about their supply chains and environmental policies, practices, and impacts. The willingness of some brands and retailers to publish this information reflects the industry’s growing commitment to transparency. Yet, the industry’s progress towards transparency is still slow, with varying performance across the 250 brands and retailers.
Textiles 2030: Target, Measure, Act by Cat Salvidge
Catherine Salvidge, Strategic Technical Manager at WRAP (Waste & Resources Action Programme, a climate action NGO, delivered the afternoon keynote speech. WRAP envisions a world where climate change is addressed, aiming to contribute to a more sustainable world by fostering collective efforts to change how goods are produced, consumed, and disposed of.
Textiles 2030, WRAP’s voluntary initiative engages most UK fashion and textile industries in transitioning to sustainable and circular practices. Leveraging rapid, science-based progress, it involves 33 brands and retailers, 48 textiles reuse organisations, and 49 affiliates in a collaborative, multi-stakeholder approach. Priority action areas include design for circularity, circular business models, closing the loop and encouraging consumer behaviour change.
WRAP uses a footprint measurement tool for the entire product life cycle to drive systemic change, issue calls to action, set industry targets, and create circular roadmaps. A robust reporting framework tracks progress against targets – a 50% reduction in carbon emissions, a 30% reduction in water footprint, and a circular roadmap for the UK.
The collected data guides recommendations to minimise footprints for brands and retailers. The reporting mechanism benchmarks progress, comparing individual businesses to industry-wide advancements. This progress is monitored against established targets, enabling signatories to trace the complete life cycle of products in their portfolios. The reporting tool, highlighted by Cat, offers benefits for scenario modelling and industry consulting to define strategic focus areas.
Panel discussion: Carry Somers, Catherine Salvidge, and Prof. Kate Goldsworthy
The day concluded with a panel discussion featuring keynote speakers Carry Somers and Catherine Salvidge, joined by Professor Kate Goldsworthy, Professor of Circular Design & Innovation and Co-Founder of the Centre for Circular Design at University of the Arts London. The discussion was facilitated by Professor Anne Peirson-Smith (Fashion) and Professor Anil Namdeo (Air Quality Management) from Northumbria University.
Highlighting the importance of valuing progress over perfection, the panel encouraged collaborative action for positive change. Panellists stressed the significance of assessing a product’s entire life cycle to understand its impact comprehensively. The ever-changing nature of data, evolving daily and hourly, was underscored as a critical element, emphasising the use of dynamic data to draw logical, meaningful conclusions. Transparency emerged as a vital component, disseminating credible and comparable data for industry-wide analysis.
Exploring the diverse drivers of change in the fashion business, speakers outlined the role of businesses as leaders in advocating change and setting specific targets to guide their actions. The importance of collaboration—embracing people, partnerships, and policies—was a recurring theme for substantial change. The panel cautioned against presuming uniform perspectives among consumers, emphasising the need for behaviour change across all stakeholders, not solely relying on consumers. Additionally, health and economics were recognised as vital drivers of change, for example, focusing on understanding the health implications of chemical processing in the fashion industry and catalysing policy and governance changes.
Addressing the need for cross-disciplinary collaborations within scientific and technology disciplines, the panel identified industrial obstacles, including a lack of data, transparency issues, and difficulties in verification. A better understanding of these challenges was crucial for making more informed decisions.
Strategies for effectively communicating the impact of fashion to non-experts were also discussed. Recognising consumer motives as essential, the panel stressed the importance of captivating storytelling, urging brands to engage consumers actively in the sustainable fashion journey. Speakers highlight the importance of straightforward, fact-based communication. Finally, maintaining optimism and celebrating small victories along the path to sustainable fashion was crucial.
In a succinct culmination, each panellist summarised their call to action in a single word: collaboration, co-design, and consistency.
Written by Krishma Sabbarwal
The IMPACT+ Network will be hosting a series of future events, to keep up to date with upcoming opportunities to engage with the team, visit: https://bit.ly/impactplusnetwork and sign up to our newsletter.
