Vol 23: Higg Drama, China's Waste & something actually good about 2020
Good job on Google, everyone!
This newsletter is about the fashion world needing to embrace the challenge of transforming into a more sustainable industry.
Our focus in this week’s edition is on a recent drama that was exacerbated by a divided populace with often competing interests, and more importantly, the lack of a common language and shared understanding.
No, we promise we will not touch the election 😀. We’re going to talk about the Higg Index.
We summarized recent developments around the Sustainable Apparel Coalition’s Higg Materials Sustainability Index. That lack of a common language remains a major hurdle our industry needs to overcome to make genuine progress. The back-and-forth with Higg remains a healthy tension, but even if we are all pushing for different things regarding sustainability, we’ll all hopefully soon be speaking the same language.
Happy Reading,
The Embrace Team
SAC to Retire ‘Criticized’ Higg MSI Score Early Next Year - WWD
Since 2009, major textile players tried to come together in a quest for the ideal tool to assess and improve their environmental impact. When The Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC) was founded a year later, it aimed to become the textile industry’s leading alliance for sustainable production.
The idea was to create an industry-wide standard on how to measure, evaluate and improve how companies perform regarding sustainability. The first Higg Index was launched in 2011, later transforming into the Higg Materials Sustainability Index (MSI). This tool would enable companies to accurately measure and score their and/or product’s sustainability performance – at every stage on their sustainability journey.
For a time, it seemed like the Higg Index was something only industry insiders cared about, but then customers started to ask questions about sustainability and demand. This resulted in Higg Index to spin off into a separate, for-profit entity Higg Co.
Just this summer the SAC and Higg Co have updated Higg MSI, part of its continuous updating process as new and improved methodologies were developed. But last week SAC hit the headlines saying that starting from January 2021 the apparel industry's sustainability assessment tool will be dropped after a wave of criticism.
So what was wrong with Higg MSI?
biased methodology - in particular, the critics found its methodology biased in favor of synthetic, oil-based clothing over natural fiber clothing. It also omitted microplastics and other factors, such as the commercial viability of recycling a fiber. Leather industry players also raised concerns about the use of inaccurate data and methodology.
lack of transparency - the Higg MSI data wasn't shared with the public. This will be changed in 2021 with the launch of Higg Co’s new Open Data Portal.
low effectiveness in driving change - recently the efficiency of the SAC’s past 11 years of work was questioned by researchers from the University of California Berkeley and criticized for bringing slow transformation to the industry in terms of transparency and collaboration.
To remedy this, SAC launched the Higg Product Module (Higg PM) that will allow brands, retailers, and manufacturers to calculate their product and supply chain performance. With an update, expected in early 2021, the new tool will also assess such areas as distribution, product use, and end of use. This will provide a more holistic approach to measuring and tracking sustainability performance.
Is 2020 the Year of Conscious Fashion? - Sourcing Journal
Being positively associated with sustainability will become of increasing importance for brands in the upcoming years. According to the first Fashion & Luxury Digital Summit organized by Bain & Company in partnership with Google, fashion searches of "sustainability" grew by 17% over the past year compared to a 10% increase on average of any other fashion-related term.
Indeed, retail market analytics Edited’s latest report confirms the growing trend for sustainable fashion, yet in its early stage. According to its findings, new sustainable products are usually described with these buzzwords: “conscious”, “sustainable,” “eco,” “100% recycled” and “vegan” (see the graph below). However, this description makes up just 3.6 % of products in the US and 3.4% of products in the UK arriving in stores in 2020.
China’s Next Problem Is Recycling 26 Million Tons of Discarded Clothes - Bloomberg
More than 15 million tons of clothing are sent to landfill every year in the United States, but we're not alone in generating such an enormous amount of textile waste. According to Bloomberg, China throws away 26 million tons of clothes annually, less than 1% of which is reused or recycled. The majority of this waste is fast fashion – mass-produced, cheap, short-lived garments.
While the Chinese government is shifting its agenda towards sustainability with a pledge for carbon neutrality by 2060, little has been done when it comes to the local fashion industry.
Part of the problem in China is that recycling clothing is unprofitable by law. Non-charitable sales of used apparel are banned for health and safety reasons. In China, used clothes are considered unhygienic, even unlucky. And Covid-19 has reinforced that bias.
Jing Daily has recently published an article that discusses China's current sustainability disconnect on both corporate and individual levels. What's interesting about China is that while millennials and gen Z are active participants of the West's sustainability movement and the main audience for sustainable brands, the young Chinese consumers are not the key consumers for sustainability products. Hopefully, this will change in the upcoming years, but for now, the harsh reality is all talk and no (or minimal) action:
“We have been talking about sustainability, and we believe that our students and the public want to improve the environment. But does awareness necessarily mean action?” - Cheng Yingting, COO of Istituto Marangoni China
Engineered by Nature
Each week we highlight one cutting-edge sustainable material innovation. Hit reply if there are any materials you’d like us to include! 🐚
An exciting plant-based alternative to leather was developed by Vietnamese designer Uyen Tran, a second-year student in the MFA Textiles program at Parsons School of Design. It is called Tômtex and refers to the Vietnamese word "tôm", meaning shrimp.
The material is made from waste coffee grounds and the biopolymer chitin, sourced from discarded seafood shells. Although not vegan, it can repurpose about 8 million tons of seafood shell waste and 18 million tons of coffee grounds produced yearly.
The carbon footprint of Tômtex production is one hundred times less than that of real leather and fifteen times less than faux leather. The innovative material is not only biodegradable, flexible, and durable but also delights with a variety of possible textures. This September Tran's project was awarded CFDA’s Design Scholar K11 Innovation prize.
Around the news
Denmark to Cull Up to 17 Mill Mink Due to Covid-19 Mutation Concerns - according to the latest update, the Danish government has dropped an attempt to pass emergency legislation allowing it forced killing of millions of mink.
Lululemon makes social and environmental pledges - Canadian sportswear retailer released its first “Impact Agenda,” detailing the business’s social and environmental goals and strategies, including the use of 75% sustainable materials by 2025.
SMCP commits to sustainability in new plan - the parent company of French labels Sandro, Maje, Claudie Pierlot and De Fursac pledges to increase its sourcing of "eco-responsible" materials, boost circularity and scrutiny throughout its supply chain.
Mango, LuisaViaRoma Make Pledges for More Sustainable Packaging - Spanish fast-fashion retailer and Italian luxury retailer both pledge to make their packaging more sustainable by adhering to the Forest Stewardship Council’s standards.
36 Sustainability efforts of the fashion industry in October 2020 - from new partnerships to the latest product launches, Fashion United has put together a list of 36 sustainable initiatives that were announced this October. The fashion industry's march towards embracing sustainability continues.
MICROFIBERS - fibers less than 5 mm in size, that are shed from textiles and clothing during all stages of their life cycle, from production through to use and disposal. While microfibers are shed from both natural materials and synthetic materials, some synthetics are linked to shedding a specific subset of microfibers called microplastics.
Shocking fact: in 2019 about 4,000 metric tons — it's about three-tenths as heavy as the Brooklyn Bridge — of microplastics were released into California's natural environment, according to the Guardian.