For years known as the clothing factory of the world, Asian manufacturers are now undertaking a sea change in their approach to sustainable fashion to cope with rapidly changing fashion trends that are choking landfills and accelerating climate change.
European regulators are working to introduce rules by 2030 that will aim for all textile products sold in the bloc to be made from recyclable, durable and safe materials. It looks like the US will also follow suit in the long run, the South China Morning Post reported.
Globally, only 12% of clothing is recycled and most of it becomes waste due to fast-changing fashion trends, but this trend promises to change.
Hong Kong-based TAL Apparels, a pioneer in the production of apparel for leading global brands, argues that there is a need to break out of the era of hyper-consumption where clothes are bought and thrown away every fashion season.
"There is a whole movement of people who want to achieve sustainability in the apparel business," said Delman Lee, vice chairman of TAL.
TAL, which aims to halve its greenhouse gas emissions from its 2018 baseline, says it has taken a multi-pronged approach across its supply chain to buy fabrics and raw cotton in the region such as Thailand and Vietnam.
The company manufactures garments from these raw materials - supplying premium American fashion brands such as Brooks Brothers and JC Penney.
One of the main ways it is working towards this goal is to replace coal with renewable energy for manufacturing, including encouraging its upstream suppliers to do the same for energy-intensive processes such as weaving and dyeing.
Between 2009 and 2018, the company reduced its greenhouse gas intensity per unit of production by 21%. This translates into avoidance of 23,450 tonnes of CO2 equivalent emissions from the activity, or around 54,292 barrels of oil.
The company has also increased its use of better cotton to reduce its impact on the environment.
Growing cotton, which is one of the most widely used natural fibers in the world, can have a significant impact due to traditional farming methods that can lead to soil degradation, water scarcity and the use of harmful chemicals.
"We have a project where we work directly with farms that grow regenerative cotton and commit to buying cotton from them so they can grow it," Lee said, adding that farmers need such a commitment because the hype around sustainability has not yet penetrated to the farm level.
"So we're going directly to the farmers and saying if you grow your cotton that way and get certified as organic and regenerative cotton, we're going to engage with you and hopefully that's a way to get the whole system working a bit like supply and demand," he added.
Regenerative farming practices aim to leave the land in a better condition than the previous cycle, while biological practices focus on preventing damage to the soil as well as surrounding ecosystems, for example recharging groundwater.
In general, farmers can get higher prices for such produce, but Lee said the process of fully switching to organic crops could take up to two years./BGNES