Joint Recommendations from an alliance of garment industry representatives for the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Dilligence Directive In this letter the initiatives recommend three important aspects for implementing Due Dilligence at EU-level: Performing Human Rights and Environmental Due Diligence should be risk based. Due diligence does not shift responsibility: companies should review their own purchasing practices Due diligence legislation must provide certainty and clarity (coherent standards) Mehr Details
TOOLKIT: Finding hidden homeworkers in apparel & footwear supply chains The lack of visibility of homeworkers makes it difficult for international brands and retailers to address the problems of homeworkers within their own supply chains. Homeworkers, mainly women, are often employed in informal areas of clothing and footwear supply chains outside factories. Due to their precarious employment, which is not in the focus of auditors and inspectors, and the weak or lack of legal protection, they are at risk of exploitation and have the worst wages and working conditions of all workers in the value chain. This toolkit is designed to help companies improve transparency about homework within their supply chains. Mehr Details
Bringing human rights into fashion - Issues, challenges and underused potentials in the transnational garment industry The garment industry is an important economic growth engine for the Asia-Pacific region. It is also an industry with a rather poor human rights track record. This study seeks to take stock of developments in the global garment industry. It does so by analysing structural market characteristics and pressing human rights issues as well as existing instruments and initiatives. Specific attention is paid to the role of National Human Rights Institutions (NHRI) and to development policies in the global North. Analytically, the investigation is guided by the framework of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGP). Important input for the study was obtained at a joint workshop held by the German Institute for Human Rights and the Asia Pacific Forum of National Human Rights Institutions (APF) in Bangkok in January 2017 at which NHRI representatives from Bangladesh, India, Malaysia, Mongolia, Myanmar, Pakistan, Philippines, and Thailand shared their expertise on human rights issues in the garment industry and confronted the challenges their NHRIs are facing. Mehr Details
Circular business models - Redefining growth for a thriving fashion industry This study confirms the significant economic and environmental potential of circular business models. It provides an overview of the potential of models that have grown rapidly (resale, rental, repair and remaking) as well as, heavily, outlining the key actions that businesses, supported by policymakers, can take to capture their full potential. While this study does not address them directly, the social implications of a circular economy transition are vital to consider; academia and organisations including BSR and Circular Apparel Innovation Factory (CAIF) have already begun to do so. Mehr Details
Slow fashion – opportunities for sustainable clothing consumption? The article deals with the importance of clothing in various social milieu segments and how open consumers from these segments are to changes in the sense of a more sustainable consumption of clothing. Sustainable clothing consumption means, on the one hand, choosing high-quality, environmentally and socially compatible clothing when buying new clothes. On the other hand, this also includes a slowdown in clothing consumption (slow fashion) through an extension of the use phase of clothing and the raw materials used for it. The article concludes with an outlook on strategies to promote sustainable clothing consumption. Mehr Details
