Fashion’s Progress on Disclosing Emissions Is Stalling

The world’s largest fashion companies are still disclosing little about their climate efforts — and nothing at all about mounting risks to garment workers from extreme heat stress, which is going unmeasured, according to a new report by Fashion Revolution.

In its second annual “What fuels Fashion?” report, the advocacy group, which for a decade has campaigned for fashion companies to provide more transparency on their operations, said brand disclosures about their supply chains have plateaued in the past two years after initially improving in the aftermath of the 2013 Rana Plaza factory collapse in Bangladesh.

Only 10 percent of brands disclosed renewable electricity targets for their supply chains, while just 6 percent published broader renewable energy goals, the report found.

No brands shared data on heat and humidity levels in their supplier factories, even as extreme temperatures increasingly leave garment workers suffering from ill health and lost income as productivity drops.

The report, which assessed 200 of the world’s largest fashion brands, including Zara, H&M, Lululemon, Hérmes and Adidas, among others, aims to expose the industry’s dependence on fossil-fuels. Publicly listed companies accounted for 59 percent of brands that scored zero on their supply chain traceability, making real emissions even more difficult to track.

With the second edition of its report, Fashion Revolution rated brands on more granular levels of transparency than in its first edition. Its updated methodology focused not only on a brand’s climate and energy-related policies, practices and impacts in its own operations but also measured its investments to decarbonise and heat levels across different parts of the supply chain, where the bulk of climate emissions occur.

Just 11 percent of brands disclosed energy sourcing in their supply chains, compared to 60 percent that reported their energy sourcing in their own operations. Many brands also use renewable energy credits to report their energy sourcing, masking their true fossil-fuel use.

Coal use also remains a fixture of fashion’s supply chain.

Less than a fifth of brands shared coal phase-out targets at the processing level, which accounts for more than half of the emissions from textile manufacturing, and only 2 percent report their use of ‘purchased steam’ — a loophole that allows coal to remain embedded in supply chains through external providers.

In addition to this, almost no brand revealed its financing to help suppliers transition from coal to clean heat generated from renewable sources, leaving their partners to absorb the million-dollar costs of making the switch.

Fashion Revolution attributed the industry’s lack of transparency to a majority of brands’ not disclosing ownership of their supply chain, as well as reliance on short-term supplier contracts, which leads to greater opacity and ultimately hinders investments to decarbonise. Suppliers, meanwhile, are reluctant to electrify if grids remain powered by fossil fuels, while governments and utilities hesitate to invest in renewable infrastructure without clear industrial demand.

Fashion Revolution has called for urgent investment from brands in clean heat technologies like electric boilers and heat pumps, paired with worker-led monitoring of heat stress.

Without such measures in place, the advocacy group said brands risk not only their climate credibility and future output, but also the health and safety of the workers making their clothes.

Learn more:

Want to Protect Workers? Tackle Climate Change, Say Activists

For a decade, Fashion Revolution has pressured brands to improve protections for garment workers. Its latest campaign is focused on reducing the industry’s use of fossil fuels.