Recent report states forest-friendly fashion hits a major milestone
Over 500 influential brands including John Lewis and Stella McCartney, are stepping up and eliminating endangered forests from their fashion fabrics, says recent report.
Today, 515 of the world’s leading fashion designers and apparel brands, representing more than 857 billion USD in annual revenue, are committed to keeping products from vital forests out of their fabric supply chains and spurring the production of low-carbon alternatives.
Global environmental non-profit Canopy announced the latest brands to join industry giants like Stella McCartney, H&M, Zara, PVH, Kering, and Walmart in signing onto CanopyStyle, a solutions-driven initiative helping fashion brands, retailers, designers, and viscose producers keep Ancient and Endangered Forests out of their supply chains. The newest signatories include John Lewis & Partners, Wax London, Everlane, L’Estrange, Rachel Comey, BAM Clothing, Nique, Grain de Malice, and BN3TH.
These brands, as well as ensuring that their products do not rely on the world’s most vital and biodiverse ecosystems, have committed to investing in the design and use of low-carbon, low-impact Next Generation alternatives such as recycled textiles to cutting down forests. The majority of brands signing on today have also joined Pack4Good, Canopy’s parallel initiative that helps companies shift their paper packaging to be more sustainable.
“We are proud to celebrate the remarkable progress being made by the more than 500-brand-strong CanopyStyle collective,” said Nicole Rycroft, Canopy’s Executive Director. “Together, we have shifted almost half of viscose production out of sourcing from endangered forests, secured conservation gains, and spurred production of low-carbon Next Gen textiles. The job isn’t done yet: in this turnaround decade, we are redoubling efforts to keep Ancient and Endangered Forests standing, scaling commercial production of circular alternatives, and moving the needle on climate action.”
When CanopyStyle began there was little knowledge of the hundreds of millions of trees being cut down every year for fabrics like rayon and viscose. To date, the CanopyStyle initiative has:
Secured 50% of global viscose production as being at low-risk of originating from Ancient and Endangered Forests.
Spurred the transition to low-impact Next Gen textiles — including work with the world’s first pulp mill that will rely only on waste textiles as its feedstock, and small volumes of viscose made with circular waste textiles by four of the world’s largest MMCF producers.
Canopy, working with local allies, has secured initial conservation and/or long-term moratorium in 11.4M hectares of the world’s high-carbon and biodiverse forests.
The use of trees to make fabrics has more than doubled over the past 30 years, and is projected to grow by another 50-60% within the next decade. This demand continues to threaten rare, ancient forests even though less than 20% of these vital ecosystems remain intact globally.
Forests are a major part of the climate solution because they are carbon-storing powerhouses. They are also home to the vast majority of the world’s terrestrial biodiversity. If the fashion industry continues to work successfully together to end deforestation and forest degradation in supply chains, its impact would avoid forest carbon loss equivalent to eliminating the entire national emissions of a country like Switzerland, Guatemala, or Denmark.
Find out more here.