Texworld LA: Textile Supply Chain Sounds Off On Shared Environmental Responsibilities
A discussion led by Lenzing business development manager Erica Redd at Texworld LA this week centered on the roles of each player in the apparel supply chain—and where the greatest impacts and opportunities lie.
Tier 2, which encompasses the production of fabrics, accounts for a massive share of a brand’s emissions output, according to Andrew Schulenberg, marketing director for Laguna Fabrics, a Downtown, L.A. mill. “Sixty-five percent of CO2 comes from the fabric formation process, so that’s a huge responsibility for a supplier,” he said.
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This weighs heavily on brands, too, according to Reformation chief sustainability officer and vice president of operations Kathleen Talbot. “Across the tiers of our supply chain, we want to take a holistic approach to material sourcing and sustainability,” she said. The brand has ramped up traceability efforts in recent years, and has created a preferred materials matrix from which product developers choose 90 percent of inputs. “This has been the core of so much of our impact work,” because such a large portion of the brand’s carbon footprint comes from the production of textiles, she said.
As partners, Laguna and Reformation have worked together on fabrics made with lower impact fibers like Lenzing’s Tencel, for example. “In a perfect world, the consumer would be willing to pay, based on their values, for lower impact practices,” Talbot said. “But we’ve also seen that consumers are incredibly fickle, and even if they said that this was a top value for them last year, you add the pressure of inflation or other uncertainties, and that willingness to pay evaporates.”
The reality is that brands and their suppliers are bearing the brunt of sustainable material costs, she added. “We’re choosing to do this, to upgrade the model, to invest in renewables. We’re sourcing the most innovative fibers, and trying new things,” Talbot said. “I think a bigger question for the industry is how you get brands, companies and financial institutions to invest in earlier stages to commercialize and help with these transitions.”
Gary You, vice president of business and product development at Blue Diamond Global, said the China-based denim mill has completely changed its outlook when it comes to staying abreast of sustainable innovation. “The way that we’ve been looking at sustainability was actually wrong,” he said.
“We were just production-focused, and looking at the bottom line,” You added, and that meant Blue Diamond often ended up chasing trends in sustainable technologies or fibers only after a customer asked for them. It was a losing game, as the mill was often “a little late” to adopt. Blue Diamond shifted to looking “at the basics of our factory’s needs,” You said. That included developing renewable energy sources and water waste treatment and recycling capabilities. “Those are things that I think any factory or mill can really look at to re-strategize, and make things greener,” he said.
Schulenberg said Laguna Fabrics’ environmental outlook is influenced by both “upstream and downstream” partners, from fiber and yarn producers to brand customers. Understanding a brand’s sustainability objectives can inspire a mill to develop compelling solutions, he said. Earlier this year, Outerknown asked the mill to develop fabrics from Climate-Beneficial cotton sourced through the California Cotton & Climate Coalition, for example. Earlier this month, the mill announced the launch of a new line of eco-conscious textiles developed in partnership with Tencel producer Lenzing and Korean bio-based spandex maker Hyosung, which it aims to make a permanent part of its offering.
“From the fabric mill standpoint, sustainability is an internal mission, but it also comes from working with fiber and yarn suppliers to understand what they’re doing differently, and figuring out how that plays into the customer’s strategy and what they want to achieve,” Schulenberg said. “It’s really a collaborative effort.”
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