Today’s shopper is eminently conscious and willing to pay a premium for sustainable, conscious fashion that helps make a positive contribution to the environment and promotes fair labor practices. Choosing a gorgeous dress in the perfect color and style is even more satisfying when it comes as a by-product of sustainable and well-intentioned production.

In fact, Gen Z are not only poised to drive the momentum even further towards sustainable shopping, but they are also influencing older generations to similarly shift their preferences towards sustainability. This signals a huge opportunity for fashion brands to deliver clothes, shoes and accessories that are made sustainably. It is no wonder that fashion brands have jumped at the opportunity to offer sustainable options to these eco-conscious shoppers.

The reality of sustainable fashion claims

The catch for consumers? That beautiful dress is probably not quite as sustainable as its label indicates, especially in light of pervasive incorrect claims from fast-fashion brands around the usage of synthetic, non-recyclable fabrics that end up in landfills somewhere. In reality, the fashion industry is replete with wasteful and environmentally un-friendly practices, annually generating over 92 million tons of landfill waste, 10% of global emissions and accounting for 20% of global water waste. The problem will only continue to escalate, as fashion brands overproduce to cater to changing fast fashion trends.

There is a deep disconnect between sustainability claims made by fashion brands and true product provenance that points to sustainable sourcing, fair labor and minimal waste production. In many cases, this means that “fabric fraud” occurs all too frequently. For example, certified organic cotton apparel outputs far exceed supplies of raw material, suggesting that most clothes labelled as such are in fact, just regular cotton. Another investigation found that 60% of recycled polyester products were made from virgin plastic.

How can eco-conscious shoppers truly distinguish between what is embellishment and what is truth when it comes to making sustainable fashion choices?

Regulations to end fast fashion

In an effort to help consumers buy better and move their economies towards a more sustainable fashion industry, European governments are seeking to legislate the end of fast fashion by 2030 with eco-design rules that would restrict the use of non-recyclable synthetic materials, promote the use of recycled fibers and fabrics, and ensure longer durability of clothes. Furthermore, these commissions seek to deter wasteful overproduction by proposing that brands report unsold stock and landfill waste, in the hopes that this obligation will be an effective brand reputation disincentive. Additionally, they would outlaw “greenwashing” claims about product sustainability that cannot be verified and supported.

France has been a first-mover with French Decree 2022-748 AGEC, which stipulates that brands selling in France as of January 2023 must include point-of-sale labelling with detailed and verified information about reparability, recyclability, sustainability, traceability and more. These kinds of rules would have a far-reaching impact for clothes manufactured worldwide, as nearly 75% of apparel worn in Europe is imported.

While these regulations make a bold step towards a more sustainable future, most fashion brands are now left to ponder how they can start to provide verifiable information about the sustainability of their clothing, given pervasive lack of insight into the sourcing of raw materials and complex supply chains. Furthermore, even a simple garment like a t-shirt can change hands multiple times, with raw materials coming from one supplier and other parts of the process like spinning, knitting and sewing each happening elsewhere.

The need for physical and digital traceability

Comprehensive insight into product provenance will require a combination of physical and digital traceability technologies that can work with the materials being sourced.

For example, forensic tracing methods like isotope analysis can trace the soil-based origins of natural materials like cotton, silk and wool; while additive tracers like artificial DNA or pigments can be applied to a number of fabrics, including synthetics, to track them through the supply chain. Digital blockchain-based tracing on the other hand can help combine the data from these physical tracers, as well as other supplier-based data inputs to provide an immutable ledger of product traceability, from source to customer.

Blockchain-based traceability can also be applied to help verify claims made by brands around fashion circularity that affect product end of life. More retailers are offering circularity incentives like garment repair, take-back-schemes, resale platforms and upcycling opportunities that help drive sustainable fashion by minimizing wastefulness. These incentives will require traceability and visibility to understand whether they are being faithfully executed. For example, if products that are being marked for upcycling are truly being repurposed into new fashion or not.

Blockchain enables transparent fashion

A digital traceability approach provides a scalable way forward by enabling brands to get broader visibility into the tiers of their supply chains while maintaining utmost trust in the data collected by using fraud-proof blockchain transactions. Brands will be able to ensure that all suppliers down the value chain provide the required level of data and insights into their own processes and supporting digital documents like certifications to help verify the quality of their materials and products. There is significant trust afforded by blockchain, for both brands and suppliers, because security controls ensure that commercially sensitive information is not unwittingly disclosed to non-relevant parties without authorization.

Furthermore, since blockchain ledger data is protected with the highest level of tamper-resistant encryption, a digital traceability platform can become a one-stop shop for the truth. This lends itself well to auditability by third parties and regulators since all sustainability claims and certifications can be validated and authenticated by these immutable blockchain records.

A blockchain digital tracing platform can provide value beyond just product sourcing information: it can also track other sustainability factors, including carbon footprints of suppliers along the value chain, water usage, wasteful overproduction and even fair labor practices. By tracking these different factors, brands will be better prepared to meet upcoming legislative requirements for sustainable fashion and increase their brand reputation by simply doing the right thing.

Using IBM technologies to transform the future of fashion

This kind of transparent, granular insight can enable business transformation at a large scale. In fact, UK Fashion Trust is doing just that, using IBM technologies to pilot a new data-driven platform that will help the UK fashion and textile industry gain real-time insight to effectively track and trace, make more sustainable choices and drive profitability with increased supply chain transparency.

Transparency is a must if the fashion industry is to move towards a more ethical and sustainable future; however, there is more value to being transparent than just playing catch-up with regulations. For brands, this is an opportunity to demonstrate their authenticity and tell the real story behind where their clothes are coming from, showing customers the real value of what they are purchasing, so that the next time they shop for a new dress from a brand, they will realize just how special that dress really is.

Learn how IBM Blockchain Transparent Supply can help your fashion brand transform today