Okay, so not everything is shit right now. Like, sure, we elected the Manchurian Candidate president, and NATO is on life support, but at least some major apparel companies are trying to curb the damage the fashion industry is doing to the environment. And according to a recent Greenpeace report, it’s kinda working.
Detailed by Refinery29, the report clocks the progress of the 80 brands that committed to Greenpeace’s “Detox My Fashion” initiative back in 2011 — a “challenge [to] big clothing brands from all sectors to take responsibility for the environmental impacts of their manufacturing supply chains and commit to achieve zero discharges of hazardous chemicals by 2020” – and it found that, surprisingly, “the textile industry has actually made some improvements.”
Since the the program began, “72% of the companies involved have eliminated per- and polyfluorinated chemicals (PFCs), which are used to make clothing water-repellant, from their products” the story said, and “72% have also moved towards more radical transparency by publishing a list of all suppliers on their supply chain.”
“We have made great progress in phasing out hazardous chemicals that pollute our waterways and environment,” said Bunny McDiarmid, executive director of Greenpeace International, who also noted that since the DMC began, the clothing industry “now takes responsibility for their production instead of just their products.”
Unfortunately, those 80 companies, which include Adidas, Nike, Victoria’s Secret and Valentino, only make up a fraction of the fashion industry and “85% of the textile industry is still not doing enough to eliminate hazardous chemicals and improve factory working conditions,” Kristen Brodde, Germany’s project lead on the initiative, said.
But, despite the long odds, the story notes that good things do loom on the horizon. “From 2020, it will no longer be legal to import any textiles containing the hormonal nonylphenol ethoxylate (NPE) into the EU; carcinogenic substances are also on the agenda.”
Until then, the story notes that “shopping sustainably is a lot easier than you think.” But you already knew that.
You can read more about it at Refinery29.
