Ecotextile Talks - Fashion Brands Falling Short on Climate Action

Ecotextile Talks returns with its first podcast for 2025 with host Philip Berman sitting down with our Mike Schragger, founder of the Sustainable Fashion Academy, to provide a progress update from the Scandinavian Textile Initiative for Climate Action (STICA).

With 55 member companies, including brands such as H&M, Sandquist, Nudie Jeans, Björn Borg, and Intersport, STICA supports apparel and textile companies operating in both Scandinavian, European and international markets to set science-based targets and reduce their greenhouse gases in line with a 1.5°C warming pathway, as outlined by the United Nations Framework on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement.

Its aim, Schragger explains, is to provides an independent, neutral, non-competitive platform for companies and organisations to demonstrate accountability by publicly reporting on their progress on a regular basis through an annual report, and also to learn best practices for reducing their GHG emissions. “At the minimum, what the report does is say whether they (the brands) are on their way to meeting the targets that they’ve set through us and our methodology, or are they not, and how far are they?” says Schragger. “They also talk about how they’re doing in terms of implementation. Because it’s one thing to set a target and report on it, but it’s another thing actually to work towards it concretely.”

Discussing progress, Schragger highlights both what he calls the “good news and not so good news”, to emerge from his members’ efforts. The report shows that 39 members say that their emissions have decreased, while 58% report that they’re on track to meet their scope 3 targets for 2030. “And then there’s a few other positive things that I’m going to pick out,” says Schragger. “74% report that they are engaging suppliers to support them in implementing renewable energy and energy efficiency initiatives, 44% have a plan to engage policy makers to influence legislation, and 150 company representatives are involved in all our hands-on working groups.”

There is of course, nuance to some of the statistics in the progress report, and Schragger tells Berman that many of those who have decreased their emissions have done so because actually they’ve sold less products, not consciously because of climate targets or the implementation of specific climate investments. “Only 9% of signatories have things like executive pay and bonuses linked to decarbonisation, only 35% say their financial growth plan is aligned with their decarbonisation plan, and only 10% of contracts with suppliers include financial incentives. And this figure is only 2% in tier two, where a lot of the emissions are when it comes to circular business models. So these are the kinds of things that show that even if they are making progress, there are still so many challenges with implementation.”

Schragger also tells Berman that incentives are not sufficient enough to drive investment in circular business models. “Right now, it’s still just more profitable to develop and produce a virgin product and sell it on the market than it is to develop a business model that takes back and resales and refurbishes and sells multiple times,” he says. “The model is still not significant enough to replace the linear models that we’re so used to and that’s the big challenge. We need to find policies that enable that.”

You can find more information on the STICA 2024 Progress Report here: https://sustainablefashionacademy.org/stica/reporting-guidelines-annual-reports/progressreport2024/

This podcast was produced by Ecotextile News and published on February 4th, 2025, on https://www.ecotextile.com/2025020454152/podcasts/podcast-fashion-brands-falling-short-on-climate-action/.