The "Reimagining Growth Landscape Analysis Report"(hereafter referred as the “Report”) was released in November 2024 by Textile Exchange. It deeply analyzes the urgency, challenges, and strategies for the transformation of growth models in the fashion, apparel, and textile industries, points out the direction for the sustainable development of the industry, helps address environmental and social crises, and realizes the crucial transformation from traditional growth to sustainable models.
The Report represents a thorough exploration of the dominant linear "take-make-waste" business paradigm within the fashion, apparel, and textile sector. Its core objective is to instigate a transformation that diverges from the current unrestrained utilization of resources. By meticulously dissecting this prevalent model, the report endeavors to unearth the root causes and far-reaching consequences of excessive resource exploitation. It proffers a suite of strategic pathways and innovative solutions, intended to steer the industry towards a more sustainable and responsible trajectory. This not only holds the potential to alleviate the environmental toll but also to foster a more equitable and prosperous future for all stakeholders involved.
The full report can be downloaded Here.
Core Conclusions
- Urgent Transformation: The existing growth trajectory of the industry contradicts climate, nature, and human rights goals. Greenhouse gas emissions are rising, resource consumption is excessive, and social inequalities are intensifying. There is an urgent need for systemic change that goes beyond incremental sustainability efforts and redefines the core of value creation.
- Concept Reconstruction: The traditional definition of growth is deeply entrenched, but limited by the earth's resources, it is necessary to shift from pursuing quantitative growth to focusing on qualitative growth, giving priority to environmental and social sustainability and balancing economic, ecological, and social elements.
- Diverse Paths: Enterprises can explore changes from multiple dimensions, such as restricting resource use, improving product quality, reducing overproduction, expanding circular business models, safeguarding human rights, adjusting marketing strategies, innovating value measurement, and transforming ownership governance models.
Highlights
1. Analysis of Industry Growth Dilemmas
- Severe Environmental and Social Challenges: The fashion, apparel, and textile industries have high greenhouse gas emissions and heavy resource dependence. The linear production model leads to more waste, serious pollution, and damaged labor rights, resulting in a sharp conflict between growth and sustainability goals.
- Complex Roots of Growth Addiction: Global economic growth has accelerated since the 1950s and is closely linked to population growth and the rise of the middle class. However, the defects of the GDP measurement model have led to increased inequality, resource abuse, and environmental degradation, and many planetary boundaries have been exceeded.
2. In-depth Discrimination of Growth Concepts
- Stark Contrast between Degrowth and Green Growth: Degrowth advocates for a planned reduction of resource and energy use to balance the economy and ecology, improve well-being, and reduce inequality. Green growth aims to coordinate economic growth with emission reduction and resource conservation and decouple growth from environmental impacts through technology, but its effectiveness is questioned, and it is difficult to achieve absolute decoupling globally.
- Diverse Industry Growth Concepts: The report sorts out the definitions of many growth-related terms. For example, the circular economy focuses on recycling resources, decoupling includes relative and absolute decoupling, and overproduction and overconsumption exacerbate inefficiency and environmental burdens in the industry, laying a solid foundation for understanding the essence of industry growth.
3. Insight into Industry Transformation Challenges
- Numerous External Obstacles: There is a lack of policy support, a lagging regulatory framework, weak infrastructure, a lack of global policy coordination, and insufficient support for sustainable supply chains in trade agreements, making it difficult for enterprises to transform and resulting in unfair competition.
- Significant Internal Resistance: Enterprises face systemic transformation difficulties, such as short-sighted pressure from shareholders, rigid internal structures, mismatched incentive mechanisms, shortages of talents' knowledge and skills, short-sighted financing models, complex and opaque supply chains, difficult-to-change consumer habits, and a scarcity of transformation cases.
4. Exploration of Enterprise Transformation Paths
- Optimization and Upgrading at the Production and Consumption Ends: Enterprises should limit the use of finite resources and focus on renewable or recycled materials; improve product quality, emphasizing durability and emotional connection, and reduce overproduction through precise planning based on technology; expand circular business models, tap service values, and avoid negative effects.
- Comprehensive and Coordinated Promotion of Change: Enterprises need to promote fairness and human rights, protect labor rights, adjust marketing to abandon the inducement of overconsumption; innovate value measurement standards and incorporate environmental and social indicators; integrate financial forces and adjust investment strategies; try alternative ownership governance models, strengthen corporate advocacy, promote policy improvement, ensure a just transformation, and resolve social risks.
5. Industry Future Prospects and Action Initiatives
- Multi-agent Collaborative Cooperation: It calls for in-depth dialogue and cooperation among stakeholders and investors across the value chain, learning from cross-industry experiences, and the in-depth participation of decision-makers. Incorporate diverse voices, especially those from developing countries and marginalized groups, to jointly promote industry transformation.
- Clear Goals and Continuous Promotion: Set industry resource and production reduction targets, formulate roadmaps based on scientific and ethical processes, and monitor and evaluate to ensure implementation; fill data gaps, conduct in-depth research on the economic impacts and consumer behaviors of transformation; formulate policy documents, draw on experience to improve policies, and facilitate the sustainable development of the industry.