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Europe’s Green Deal calls for companies to act sustainably. Four business professors from the Dortmund University of Applied Sciences have investigated whether sustainability in the distribution of German companies is just a nice word on paper or a lived practice. Your conclusion: The companies still have a lot to do. But if they act now, it pays off.

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The fashion industry pollutes the planet and the communities that form the backbone of its supply chains with more climate pollution than aviation. Yet it needs second-hand value-driven customers if brands are to return from the brink of disaster wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic. This report outlines 5 steps fashion brands must take to drawdown their emissions rapidly, including setting ambitious climate commitments with full transparency, centering renewable energy in supply chain decisions with specific commitments to phase out coal, advocating for renewable energy policies in supply chain countries, sourcing lower carbon and longer lasting materials, and reducing the climate impacts of shipping.

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This tool offers a new perspective on buyer-supplier relationships by specifying those relationships through the lens of partnership quality. Using just 12 subjective measures, the BBPI opens up new opportunities to learn about the impacts of purchasing practices by enabling suppliers in a range of industries and supply chain tiers to participate.

A total of 679 ratings were received during the 2021 ratings cycle. One hundred buyers were rated, including 94 buyers in the Softgoods category and 6 in the Hardgoods category (buyers that sell product types other than apparel, footwear, and household textiles). Most ratings were for Softgoods buyers (519 ratings), while the remaining were for Hardgoods buyers (160 ratings).

The suppliers that submitted ratings were from 50 different countries and regions, with nearly half of the ratings coming from the following areas: China (16.2% of all ratings), Taiwan (10.3%), the United States (9.9%), Hong Kong (6.3%), and South Korea (5.9%).

Key takeaways:

• Suppliers are under much pressure: Many buyers never, rarely, or sometimes providing enough time, adequate visibility, stable business, and fair financials
• Many buyers are missing opportunities to improve their businesses by not seeking their suppliers’ ideas for product and process innovation
• Suppliers seem to currently have a low bar for what they consider an acceptable business relationship
• Buyer supply chains are further threatened by potential supply disruption, higher costs, and increased reputational risks.

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With companies risking disruptions to fiber production from climate impacts and biodiversity loss, at Textile Exchange we believe that a transition to regenerative agriculture is fundamental to the long-term health of the sector. Regenerative practices can play a key role in helping farmers develop more resilient systems, bringing immense social and environmental benefits.

The Regenerative Agriculture Landscape Analysis offers a deeper understanding of tools, programs, initiatives, and guidance on the subject. It highlights how important it is for brands to clearly define their own use of the term, and to ensure that social justice, equity, and livelihoods are meaningfully embedded in any project deemed regenerative.

Key takeaways:

• The long-term health of the fashion and textile industry will depend on how it is able to work with farmers to develop more resilient systems, and regenerative practices offer immense social and environmental benefits
• Regenerative agriculture can’t be defined in a single statement or set of practices.
• Programs should be rooted in justice, equity and livelihoods.
• Regenerative agriculture is about much more than increasing soil carbon levels.
• We need to move out of silos to speed up the transition.

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Despite economic growth and declining poverty levels across Asia, inequality continues to grow, with large groups of society remaining marginalized in economic and social terms.

Women in Asia continue to experience massive structural disadvantages, from early childhood education through their retirement from work—if they wanted and were allowed to work—and into their older age. It is mainly women who are exploited as cheap labour in Asia’s export industries and low-skill sectors, especially agriculture, textiles and the footwear and electronic industries. They are paid subsistence wages and experience increasing precariousness of their working as well as living conditions.

On the heels of all the economic progress now comes rapid technological transformation that is altering the present and future nature of work in ways that offer a multitude of opportunities but also add new levels of risks for social groups across the Global South.

Women are particularly vulnerable and disproportionally affected by these changes, both in the context of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and in the ever-expanding care work across the formal and informal sectors.

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