Major players in the fashion industry, including Bestseller, Gap Inc., H&M Group, and Mango, are set to transform the consumer goods industry and promote sustainable practices. The Fashion Pact, in partnership with the Apparel Impact Institute, Guidehouse, and DBS Bank, has initiated a collective financing model to support apparel suppliers’ deep decarbonization. This initiative combines financial incentives, such as de-risking loans, with technical support.
Fast fashion giants are coming together to share the costs, risks, and responsibilities of reducing CO2 emissions in the fashion industry’s value chain. The goal is to transition to renewable energy and implement solutions that will reduce CO2 emissions from the manufacturing sector. The initiative addresses the main barriers preventing many textile factories from reducing resource consumption or implementing renewable energy solutions.
The Future Supplier Initiative’s collective-financing model offers brands financial security, and technical support to meet global climate goals and cut their supply chain emissions roughly in half by 2030. The participating companies anticipate leading the path toward reducing CO2 emissions from the fashion industry’s value chain, which currently accounts for about 99% of the sector’s total emissions.
Eva von Alvensleben, Executive Director and Secretary General of The Fashion Pact, emphasized the importance of this collaboration: “The cost of inaction on climate change is unaffordable. The Future Supplier Initiative is a unique opportunity for fashion retailers to join forces and drive progress towards science-based targets, and offer much-needed financial and technical support to apparel suppliers in their journey to decarbonization.”
H&M CEO Daniel Ervér highlighted their role in this alliance: “The Future Supplier Initiative shows that solutions are readily available and come with proven impact, but it requires commitments from brands and investors willing to invest. We encourage others to join our efforts to tackle our industry’s negative climate impact.”
The first program of the initiative will launch in Bangladesh and Vietnam—two of the world’s largest fashion-producing countries. The Future Supplier Initiative is actively recruiting more brands, to expand to other key apparel manufacturing regions, including India, China, Italy, and Turkey. The alliance will prioritize projects with significant potential for impact and those that can be widely scaled across the fashion industry.
This partnership represents a significant step towards aligning industry practices and achieving measurable impact at scale. The initiative is actively recruiting more brands, to expand to additional regions.
