Fashion Supply Chain Zeniths the Sustainable Approach

With the fashion industry having the longest supply chain among industries, players in this space have several opportunities to intervene through the supply chain and transform their business while advancing sustainability goals

- Abhishek Sharma

The fashion industry, globally and in India, is increasingly taking the sustainability path to transform the supply chain. Like several other industries, the growing environmental impact, and ever-shrinking pool of resources, including water, rising production, and logistics costs, are seeing the fashion industry explore sustainable ways of designing, manufacturing, and distributing fashion products.

The Big Picture 

Rapid development across industries is bringing along challenges of global warming, climate change, and depleting natural resources. The fashion industry is no exception. Being resource-intensive, the fashion industry is among economic the major contributors to global carbon emissions. With its various processes, including dyeing and the wet processing that fabrics undergo, the fashion industry consumes a lot of water and ends up being a source of water pollution.

Owing to a slow pace of technological advances, many traditional processes in the industry have remained unchanged over the years.

However, recently there have been positive developments in the fashion industry, which have seen various industry stakeholders rise to the responsibility of growing their business and industry sustainably. The focus is on age-old processes that may damage the environment and replace them with more eco-friendly practices across the fashion supply chain.

There are other factors too that are leading to industry transformative practices in the fashion industry. The growing crisis around fast-depleting natural resources in many developing economies (manufacturing hubs for the fashion industry) combined with the rising tribe of climate-conscious consumers demanding products environment-friendly is accelerating fashion players' journey to embrace sustainable practices.