Fashion companies have sustainability in the bag

The fashion industry is forward facing when it comes to sustainability.

The clothes we wear are often a public expression of ourselves and our values. This scorecard looks at the sustainability credentials of the heavy hitters in the fashion industry to determine whose hot or not.

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Fashion companies have sustainability in the bag.

Now more than ever before, Australians are becoming more conscious about the companies they support and purchase from.

This is especially so in the fashion industry, where the rise in demand for sustainably sourced products is matched by an increasing number of brands claiming to be sustainable.

But where to seek information on a brands' true sustainability and ethical practices? 

Ethical fashion directory Good On You, with 700,000+ users and growing, have a system for rating a brand’s impact on people, planet and animals.

While this is undoubtedly a great resource, we thought we would use the resource at our fingertips to run some of the world's top fashion brands through our data partner’s platform to determine their real SDG impact.

All of the seven companies analysed scored above the Sustainable Platform database average (over 18,000+ companies listed globally), with a group average score of 87.

The leader in the group is Japanese retailer Fast Retailing Co Ltd (Uniqlo, J Brand, Tim Tam) with an SDG score of 96.

Just behind with an equal score of 90 are global heavyweights H&M and Zalando. They, in turn, are followed by Global Fashion Group (TopShop, Mango, Guess) at 88, and Spanish multinational  Industria de Diseno Textil  (Zara) at 86.

American favourite The Gap scores 83 while ASOS rounds the group with a score of 80.

All but one of the companies analysed have controversial industry exposure to fossil fuels, mainly oil from deliveries and production.

Global Fashion Group has the most fossil fuel exposure of the group. The group’s notable exception is Zalando who offset their carbon emissions from operations, deliveries and returns.

The sector's largest contribution to sustainability is unsurprisingly to the basic needs of clothing, but also to communication as well as health.  

Because of this, all of these companies score highly on SDG 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities, SDG 1: No Poverty, but did not contribute significantly to many of the other goals.

*All SDG score and data are provided by Sustainable Platform based on data as at 17 July 2020.

Top contributing goals

Of all the 17 SDGs, the selected fashion companies analysed contribute most to these below goals:

• SDG 1: No Poverty

• SDG 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities.

Find out more about the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

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Sustainable Platform is a sustainability information service only to institutional investors and doesn’t provide general or personal financial advice.

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