14th February 2025
Shanta Bhavnani highlights findings from a research report by Ethical Consumer into how the textile and fashion industry can transition to being more sustainable and ethical.
The clothing sector has long been criticised for its poor practices in many areas. Ethical Consumer magazine’s most recent shopping guide to high street clothing brands found poor practice on climate, workers’ rights, environmental impact of materials, animal rights and animal welfare, and financial matters such as tax conduct and excessive director pay.
Despite consistent campaigning and public awareness on these issues the trend seems to be negative, with the recent development of ultra fast fashion driving up production and consumption and exacerbating the harms done by the sector.
In 2024, Ethical Consumer was asked by a foundation to explore ways that it could use its grant and investment funding to support a more sustainable clothing and textile sector.
Our new report, based on evidence from NGOs, campaigners, academics and clothing-makers, describes a common vision for a more sustainable sector and selects five main areas for development and funding. It also discusses methods the foundation could use to distribute its funds to achieve the most impact.
The report (Shifting the textile and fashion sector) will be of interest to funders working towards a more sustainable clothing sector but will also be relevant to campaigners and those working in the sector.
We summarise the findings below or click the link to download the full report (as .pdf).
Our discussions with sector experts covered a broad range of ideas but a common vision for what a sustainable sector could look like began to emerge.
That vision was of a textile and clothing sector:
Five themes which we considered worthy of funding emerged from our discussions.
Respondents identified the need to shift to more local production and highlighted the factors that are preventing this. By local production people meant within the UK and also regionally, within smaller geographical areas than the UK as a whole.
Funding is needed to encourage and facilitate the production of materials such as flax, hemp and wool in the UK, using regenerative organic approaches. The main obstacle to local fibre production is the current lack of processing infrastructure – which includes both machines and knowledge. Funding is therefore needed to develop this.
Workers’ rights in garment supply chains have been under scrutiny for many years but there has been little improvement.
As well as long-standing issues such as the right to a living wage and freedom of association, respondents discussed the impact of climate change on garment sector works. This included risks to health and safety caused by rising temperatures and floods and also the risk to worker livelihoods if consumption is reduced to meet climate goals.
All agreed that workers themselves need to be able to represent themselves and be present at discussions about a just transition. Core funding for workers’ rights organisations is therefore needed.
Many respondents commented on the overwhelming power of clothing brands and expressed the view that they will not change their behaviour unless required to do so by law.
There is now EU legislation requiring companies to identify and remedy human rights and environmental violations in their supply chains. However, funding is needed for policy and advocacy NGOs to ensure it’s implemented effectively in each EU country and to counter lobbying by brands who may seek to weaken its obligations.
Respondents commented that we need to reduce our consumption of clothing.
To do so, we need to shift social attitudes about clothing such that people can satisfy their desire for something new in ways other than making a new purchase.
This will require the teaching of practical skills, such as sewing, as well as sharing new ideas – possibly using social media – about how we relate to and value our clothes.
There are many organisations and individuals already working to address some of the above issues. But many of them are focussed on a single issue and are not connected to others working on different topics or at different levels, for example at a political, practical, international, regional, or local level. One reason for this is that they lack the time and opportunity to think about what productive connections are possible.
Funding opportunities for diverse people and organisations to build networks, share understanding and learning, and discuss the kinds of work and interventions that are necessary to shift the sector as a whole towards the shared vision, would be extremely valuable.
As well as discussing potential themes for funding, the report considers different ways of distributing funds that in themselves have an impact. This discussion is based on Ethical Consumer’s experience of distributing funds for the Lush Spring Prize for environmental and social regeneration.
A five year review of that prize found that awarding unrestricted funding promoted wellbeing, resilience, innovation and empowerment of funded groups. It also found that collaborating with others during the grant-making process can be beneficial particularly if the funding organisation has limited capacity.
Working with a diverse array of partners can create an ecology of support where different partners fulfil different functions. For example, a media partner can benefit from sharing the stories and insights of funded groups (as can the funder); other funders may be interested in backing projects that have gone through a vetting process they trust; research organisations may be keen to analyse applications and discussions to deepen their own understanding of a sector; and organisations keen to support their staff to learn about a topic could offer shortlisters to screen initial applications.
The report recommended that the foundation which commissioned the work should focus on the theme of local production. However, it found value in each of the five themes. We therefore hope that the report will be useful to other funders who are developing programmes seeking to achieve a sustainable garment sector.