The fashion industry is responsible for nearly 4% of all greenhouse gas emissions worldwide and uses more energy than the aviation and shipping industry combined. According to a UN Climate Change report, fashion brands will need to dramatically reduce their carbon footprint in order to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change.
The fashion industry’s impact on climate change is not lost on consumers. More shoppers than ever are pushing for action, and rewarding companies like ArmedAngels and Allbirds for their leadership in sustainability. If fashion brands hope to meet emission goals and become aligned with emergent market demands, they will need to accurately manage their greenhouse gas emissions across the entire lifecycle of their product lines.
You’re probably familiar with carbon accounting, a method of tracking carbon emissions that enables businesses to understand the environmental impact of their operations. Most carbon accounting procedures are conducted once a year, which creates a significant gap between the previous year’s product and your current line. If any component of the supply chain changes between the time you commissioned the report and your current line —materials and suppliers, for example—the data will already be out-of-date. If we want to decarbonize fashion, we need to make informed decisions based upon current, real-time insights into the emissions.
Carbon management is a proactive and strategic approach to actively reduce greenhouse gas emissions throughout the entire supply chain, enabling brands to achieve their sustainability goals while enhancing operational efficiency. By syncing a carbon management tool to your existing business software, you will be able to access real-time measurements, and make accurate forecasts based upon changes in materials, suppliers, or transportation.
For fashion brands, this means that designers and engineers can integrate carbon data from the initial stages of the design process through to the finished product. Not only will you understand your footprint with carbon management, you’ll be able to identify and act upon key opportunities to reduce emissions throughout the value chain.
The carbon management industry is growing. There are numerous tools on the market such as Watershed and Plan A that offer carbon accounting for a slew of industries, but we believe the most accurate and efficient tools are industry-specific.
Here’s why:
Comparison between generalist carbon management platforms and industry-specific platforms
Carbonfact is the only carbon management tool designed specifically for the fashion industry. Leveraging the expertise of our science team, Carbonfact’s life cycle assessment engine offers a robust, curated dataset that can illustrate how product-level decisions impact your company’s total greenhouse gas emissions. Even if your company has messy or missing data, our life cycle assessment tool can help fill in the blanks and make sense of your carbon footprint.
Carbon management plays a crucial role in the fashion industry's journey towards decarbonization. By actively reducing greenhouse gas emissions, fashion brands can not only contribute to the fight against climate change, but also enhance their brand reputation. An industry-specific carbon management tool is the most effective method of achieving these goals.
Such a solution offers quick integration into your existing software, fashion-specific metrics, and expert understanding of the manufacturing process. Carbonfact quickly identifies hotspots and helps you make product-level decisions that will reduce your company’s carbon footprint. With Carbonfact, brands can position themselves at the forefront of our industry’s efforts to decarbonize fashion.