Fashion industry signs up to green makeover

Typically, the only makeovers to be found at London Fashion Week involve make-up and haircuts, but this year many of the industry's biggest names have signed up to a makeover of a different kind, committing to cut the industry's giant environmental footprint.

More than 300 organisations, including retailers Marks & Spencer, Tesco and Sainsbury, clothing giant Nike, emerging green fashion firms such as Adili, charity shops, the Fairtrade Foundation and the London College of Fashion, have today marked the opening of London Fashion Week by signing up to the government's new Sustainable Clothing Roadmap.

Under the agreement, the signatories have agreed to undertake a wide range of measures designed to cut the fashion industry's environmental and carbon footprint and improve labour practices across its global supply chains.

According to government figures the clothing and textiles sector in the UK produces around 3.1m tonnes of CO2, two million tonnes of waste and 70m tonnes of waste water each year.

Moreover, 1.5 million tonnes of unwanted clothing ultimately ends up in landfill, a figure that has increased in recent years as the shift towards wider use of man-made fibres has made recycling more difficult.

Unveiling the new strategy, Lord Philip Hunt, minister for sustainability, welcomed the involvement of more than 300 different organisations from right across the sector.

"This action plan represents a concerted effort from the fashion industry – including top names in the high street and manufacturers – to change the face of fashion," he said, adding that the aim of the strategy was to provide consumers with greater confidence that their clothes are sustainable.

"We should all be able to walk into a shop and feel that the clothes we buy have been produced without damaging the environment or using poor labour practices, and that we will be able to reuse and recycle them when we no longer want them," he said.

The action plan calls on clothing and textile firms to improve their environmental performance across the entire life of a garment, through selecting more sustainable fibres and fabrics; tracking the environmental and ethical record of suppliers; designing clothes that have a long life, are easy to recycle and clean; and better promoting recycling and reuse.

It also calls for greater promotion of green clothes and awareness campaigns to help consumers recognise the environmental benefits of sustainable fashion.

The government has also secured a number of more-detailed commitments from some of the signatories to the action plan.

M&S, Tesco and Sainsbury, for example, have all committed to expand clothing take-back programmes and increase their ranges of Fairtrade and organic clothes, while the Fairtrade Foundation has set itself a target of ensuring Fairtrade cotton is used in at least 10 per cent of cotton clothing in the UK by 2012, and Tesco has said it will ban cotton from countries known to use child labour.

M&S and Tesco have also announced that they will step up efforts to encourage customers to wash clothes at 30 degrees centigrade, while Tesco said it would extend its existing carbon labelling scheme to show customers the carbon footprint of its laundry detergents.

Similarly, Continental Clothing announced that it has successfully pioneered carbon footprinting of its clothing products and is now looking to promote carbon labelling of its products through online green fashion retailer Adili.

And the London College of Fashion unveiled plans for a new Centre for Sustainable Fashion, designed to provide the industry with practical guidance on best practices, techniques and designs that promise to enhance the sector's su stainability.