Global Fashion Agenda Promotes Public-Private Partnerships During Climate Week
Global Fashion Agenda (GFA) didn’t mince words when it warned that the climate catastrophe is “no distant threat” last week.
The fashion sector, forever on the “periphery of climate action discussions,” needs to take advantage of the opportunity Climate Week presents to “redefine the industry’s role” in the global, there-is-no-planet-B battle, the group said.
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Hosted by the Danish sustainability think tank in collaboration with Climate Group, Ceres and E.C.O. Equity, the “GFA Policy Master Class: Threads of Pre-Election Policy” seminar on Sept. 25 explored how the fashion industry can drive change. Held at the strategic creative agency Combo’s Chinatown office, Unless Collective founder and CEO Eric Liedtke and California Secretary for Environmental Protection Yana Garcia discussed what the public sector can do as partners to help develop this necessary framework.
“We love to see industry, government and users all coming together to achieve a common goal,” Angela Barranco, executive director of Climate Week’s parent, Climate Group, prefaced. “We have the power to shape trends and also influence behavior and also to foster more sustainable practices across the supply chain.”
Doing so doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Considering November will see “changes and transitions” start rippling through the United States, it has “never been more crucial” for the industry to push for a low-carbon, circular economy.
“I know it’s hard, it’s a very tough moment,” Federica Marchionni, Global Fashion Agenda’s CEO, added. “Only the most courageous, most pioneering don’t fear all the challenges we’re facing in this moment.”
Ceres, a nonprofit climate advocacy organization, is all about helping those courageous companies engage in policy advocacy from a multi-sector and multi-factorial approach.
“One of the things that we’re really big on at Ceres is that we want to protect the investors and the companies to be able to invest and talk about [the] risk to climate change that are happening within [the] supply chain and value chain,” Amna Khan, Ceres’ senior director of strategic partnerships, said. “I think if you want to get involved, you have to be in the room.”
With that in mind, Garcia kicked off the panel discussion with some priorities surrounding her vision of achieving carbon neutrality by 2025. This included things like securing a sustainable water supply and reducing air pollution, but of the most relevance was “catalyzing a truly circular economy.”
“I think we’re really in the nascent stages of this; we’ve seen a lot of movement and a lot of great progress in thinking about what this could look like,” Garcia said, mentioning California’s Responsible Textile Recovery Act, which seeks to speed up the implementation of an extended producer responsibility (EPR) framework.
Additionally, California is “in the throes of implementing SB 54 that relates to plastics and, for the first time, is implementing an extended producer responsibility no longer on the consumer but really on the producers of plastics,” she added. “This is . . . something that was controversial and continues to be controversial as we’re implementing it, but we’re excited to move forward.”
Meanwhile, Liedtke shared some insights from his days at Adidas that led to the creation of Unless Collective, a Portland-headquartered, plant-based apparel and footwear brand.
The German sportswear giant collaborated with Parley for the Oceans under Liedtke’s tutelage, which was good. But more could be done, he thought.
“After 26 years at Adidas, why not someone like me, from the mailroom to the board floor, why don’t I try to create the holy grail, that lighthouse brand for others to follow,” Liedtke said. “We set out to create a thing called regenerative fashion. When [we] started talking to brand partners . . . Under Armour came and wanted to do more than a partnership; they wanted to help us scale. They wanted to do an acqui-hire; we’re three weeks in, but I think it gives us the platform to scale; sometimes these partnerships are meant to go together.”
On the topic of partnerships, Truong—a former Nike executive—noted that oftentimes, “The public sector is not talking to the private sector.”
“The regulators are not speaking the same language as brands,” she added.
That’s why it’s “so exciting” to meet with Liedtke: someone who “actually has been building the bridge” for the potential between public-private partnerships. His biggest piece of advice? Reach out to the public sector, and reach out often. Garcia agreed.
“I think that the private-public partnership that I like to see is this creative thinking and a true, genuine desire to do better across so many companies,” Garcia said. “Really creating a space where we can level the playing field . . . Everyone wants to create the most beautiful products for their consumers and now that has to be sustainable, not only by regulation but by what the desires are from the market. I think that’s kind of the best way that we can leverage this public-private partnership.”
This is critical, Liedtke added, as “no one on the brand side is going to disarm” unless brand advocacy is being built unilaterally. That’s what happened at Adidas with Parley for the Oceans—a trident of “product times story times distribution,” per the mind behind Yeezy—and that’s what Unless is all about: educating the consumer on how brutally bad the apparel industry can be.
“The real problem that we’ve talked about with microplastics is that it’s systemic, but the general public does not know. Spending the last four years trying to scale that education has been a real challenge for us,” Liedtke said. “We need some policy to level the playing field or else the Shein’s and the Temu’s will continue to eat our lunch.”
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