SAC partners with Fair Wear, Ethical Trading Initiative to tackle GHGs

The Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC), a global multi-stakeholder nonprofit alliance for the consumer goods industry, is pleased to announce its collaboration with Fair Wear and the Ethical Trading Initiative, with the goal of facilitating collective action across the industry to achieve a 45 percent reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) by 2030.

The alliance, which is part of The Industry We Want (TIWW), is part of a larger movement aimed at assuring dignity for people in good positions, successful supply-chain firms, and a positive influence on the environment.

For the garment and footwear business, TIWW has established a set of metrics to monitor action across three pillars: social, commercial, and environmental. The impact measurements will be provided in TIWW’s first-ever industry dashboard, which will be updated annually and function as a “temperature check” for the sector as a whole.

The SAC will spearhead TIWW’s environmental pillar and collaborate closely with the Apparel Impact Institute (Aii), a fellow Apparel Alliance member, to ensure an annual update of the dashboard data, offering a yearly check-in on the industry’s progress in reducing emissions. The SAC will also help with the formulation and implementation of TIWW’s overall strategy, as well as organize key relationships, support TIWW-led events, and participate in the project’s yearly evaluation to highlight areas for improvement.

Amina Razvi, Executive Director of the SAC, said that they’re honored to be collaborating on this initiative with the Fair Wear and Ethical Trading Initiative, and they believe it will allow them to leverage their strength in collaboration with their fellow Apparel Alliance members to achieve their vision of an industry that gives more than it takes As an organization dedicated to providing data to the consumer goods industry so that it can better understand how to improve its environmental credentials. This partnership reinforces their commitment to transforming the industry to better serve the needs of people and the planet.

The SAC will use TIWW’s platform to help organizations set and achieve clear science-based targets (SBTs), ensuring that the industry stays on track to meet its climate change commitments, particularly the 45% reduction target, in order to significantly reduce emissions and meet climate goals while staying within planetary boundaries.

TIWW was launched in early 2021 by Fair Wear and the Ethical Trading Initiative with the goal of creating a garment and footwear industry that realizes its full potential, ensuring dignity for workers in decent jobs, and thriving businesses along the supply chain, and a positive impact on the environment. The first version of TIWW’s dashboard displayed the garment sector’s predicted total emissions, using data from Aii and WRI’s paper “Roadmap to Net Zero: Delivering Science-Based Targets in the Apparel Sector,” which was based on SAC and Textile Exchange statistics. The dashboard was also established in partnership with the WageIndicator Foundation and the Better Buying Institute to provide data on the sector’s living wage gap and purchasing practices.

Alexander Kohnstamm, Director Fair Wear, and Peter McAllister, Director ETI, said that the turbulence of Covid-19, as well as the mounting implications of climate change, serve as near-daily reminders that genuine reform in the way they do business is required. The urgency is obvious, but addressing the underlying issues in the garment and footwear industries is a task they have yet to conquer. As a result, Fair Wear and ETI are ecstatic to welcome SAC as a lead partner in The Industry We Want initiative, ensuring that they drive industry-wide progress on environmental impact, as well as commercial and social practices.