A stock take of fashion’s progress on environmental and social sustainability in 2024 reveals a murky picture.Impending regulations across the EU on supply chain due diligence, traceability and forced labor offer policy nudges in the right direction for brands and retailers.
Yet, the majority of global players lag behind, whether that’s on measuring and mitigating nature-related impacts, reducing absolute scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions or eliminating petroleum derived based fabrics.
According to the Business of Fashion and McKinsey’s 2025 State of Fashion, only 18% of fashion executives consider sustainability as a top-three risk for growth in 2025, a decline from 29% in 2024. This marries with the broader picture across other industries relayed in Bain & Co’s Visionary CEO Guide to Sustainability which found that sustainability had been de-prioritized to manage growth concerns, rising inflation, geopolitical uncertainty and to pursue the use of AI.
With disappointing outcomes from critical events including the UN CBD COP16, UNFCCC COP29 and the INC-5 for the Global Plastics Treaty, action by fashion’s stakeholders that could have been spurred by policy mandates agreed at multi-lateral negotiations have been limited.
They are limited despite the fact that the world is on a sharp trajectory to reach 3.1 degrees, a far cry from the global aim of 1.5 degrees as human activity continues to push the limits of planetary boundaries. The industry’s actions are also limited despite recent reports from the World Economic Forum that rising temperatures and extreme weather events continue to disrupt supply chains and productivity, putting up to a quarter of companies’ 2050 EBIDA at risk.
Inaction on climate presents a significant material risk to the fashion industry and wider textile and apparel ecosystem. I sat down with four experts to understand what fashion’s sustainability priorities should be for 2025.
Fashion’s Roadmap To Reimagine Growth
As of 2024, we still have not reached ‘peak stuff’. Apparel consumption is projected to increase by 63% to 102 million tons in the next five years and if the industry continues its current trajectory, by 2050, it would use more than a quarter of the world’s carbon budget.
This direction of travel was outlined by Textile Exchange, who reported in its latest Materials Market report that global fiber production increased by 7% from 2022 to 2023, to stand at 124 million tons. The organization communicated that this would rise to 160 million tons in 2030, should business as usual continue.
My conversation with sustainability strategist and writer Rachel Arthur, took place on Cyber Monday, another marked day in the Black Friday shopping spree calendar, which has proved to be equally as popular as previous years. Barclaycard reported a 9.5% increase in UK retail transactions this year compared to Black Friday in 2023.
Arthur shared her thoughts on fashion’s performance in 2024. “Eve