The State of Compliance in the Apparel Industry
Sustainability encompasses a social and an environmental element. The existence of these two parts becomes clear when we look at compliance categories of the apparel industry where companies have a certain freedom in choosing how they want to be responsible for people, planet, or both. So, let’s discuss which standards have made it to the mainstream level in the apparel industry and how they might shape the audit conventions of tomorrow?
Photo by 🇸🇮 Janko Ferlič on Unsplash
Concerning environmental standards, ISO 14000 makes the family name of a wide range of environmental management standards. Number 14001 alone, guides for over 300,000 certifications within 171 countries (source). Once a standard is accepted at the ISO level, it can be applied in all member countries, but there is freedom in writing the local specifics. For assessing harmful substances, OEKO-TEX is the global leader.
Prevailing in organics is GOTS. Providing a claim for minimally 70% organic fibers tracked throughout the entire value chain, it is one of the hardest to attain. Similar but easier to accomplish is OE 100, which works without processing criteria, providing fiber claims for the final textile product only (source). Though it concerns non-organic cotton, BCI is often mentioned together with GOTS and OE 100. The initiative is one of the biggest, attempting to mainstream cotton as a sustainable commodity.
Concerning more specific sourcing, some other global initiatives to keep in mind of are:
RWS: sheep wellbeing in wool production
RDS: sustainable down
LWG: premiere leather manufacturing certification
Cradle to Cradle (C2C): circularity i.e., complete recyclability or biodegradability
FSC: forest conservation
Canopy: protection of last frontier forests
OCS: verified content of organic fibers in the final product
Bluesign: assessment of input streams on ecological footprint
With respect to the social side, sustainability means to conduct business in a fair, decent way for workers – based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and ILO. An example is the SA8000 standard, which includes criteria around child labor, forced or compulsory labor, freedom of association & right to collective bargaining discrimination and working hours. Alternatively, Fairtrade protects the producer by providing above-market fair purchase prices.
One of the most important factors for the social side is periodic renewal. Take companies with a WRAP certification: they are constantly being monitored through unannounced physical audit visits. To finalize the list of acknowledged bodies: there is ETI and BSCI – both have their own remedial process, although their renewal policies contain no secret visits.
Certifiers often aim for a niche, but many end up with a hybrid model anyway. Take the GOTS for certified organics, that takes both environmental and human safety into account. The same is true for recycling standards RCS and GRS – the latter being more rigorous; Though their niche is recycled raw materials, social requirements must be met to get certified. Other hybrid efforts in the global sphere include ESG (for which The United States appears to be behind Europe), GSCP, the Higg Index, B Corps (purpose driven business models) and the rapidly emergent SDG’s.
Many of the aforementioned standards are not as stringent as they sound, though. These standards, when looked at closely, aim to simply build and maintain sustainable practices in various aspects of business such that the most basic care can be provided for the people and the planet to flourish. The more the reason for businesses to find complementary ways to develop transparent and sustainable business activities. Companies like Pangaia and Patagonia, for instance, assess themselves and go out of their way to be more compliant by making good fashion into an explicit journey that their customers get to be a part of.
Consumers understand the universal appeal of standards that can improve businesses for the greater good. Therefore, we should expect no less than for their further developments to be disruptive and dynamic.
Sources
https://www.iso.org/iso-14001-environmental-management.html
http://bornsage.com/2012/10/what-is-the-difference-between-gots-and-oe/
https://www.trepp.com/trepptalk/esg-us-vs-europe-curve
