Tell us less about your policies and more about the results, campaigners tell fashion brands

After a new report found brands are not disclosing enough information about their supply chains, Saman Javed explores why transparency in the fashion industry so important

Labourers at a factory in China (Getty)

Major fashion brands have been urged to increase the transparency of their supply chains and environmental impact after a new report found that the world’s largest retailers disclose, on average, just 23 per cent of their processes.

Published on Tuesday, the Transparency Index analysed and ranked 250 brands based on how forthcoming they are. Italian brand OVS topped the list with a score of 78 per cent, followed by H&M at 68 per cent and Timberland and The North Face at 66 per cent.

Fashion Revolution, the non-profit behind the report, said that while this was a marked increase on previous years, progress in transparency is still too slow in key areas such as living wages for supply chain workers, gender and race equality, production and waste volumes, deforestation and carbon emissions.

Brands with the lowest transparency scores included PrettyLittleThing (9.2 per cent), Chanel (10.6 per cent), Fashion Nova (0 per cent) and Tom Ford (0 per cent).

The news comes after the Worker Rights Consortium published findings in April that workers in at least 31 of 400 garment factories for brands including Adidas, Gap, Nike and Zara, had been laid off during the pandemic without severance pay. The organisation also found initial evidence that suggested workers in a further 210 factories had not been paid, but was unable to confirm if this was true.

Last year, many fashion companies cancelled pre-placed orders already in production and worth millions of dollars after the coronavirus outbreak shuttered stores across the world. In response, Remake, a non-profit that campaigns for an ethical fashion industry, launched a petition demanding brands #PayUp.

Brands have continued to profit throughout the pandemic, whilst garment workers have endured the devastating impacts of their cancelled orders

Sarah Ditty, Fashion Revolution

Following public outcry, some brands, including Zara, H&M, Levi’s and Nike agreed to honour their orders. As per the organisation’s latest findings, major fashion retailers such as Topshop, Forever 21 and Urban Outfitters have still not agreed to fulfil the payments.

“It should not have taken public pressure for these large and influential brands to reinstate their cancelled orders. On the contrary, their contracts should have been honoured in full throughout the pandemic,” Fashion Revolution said in its report.

Additionally, only 3 per cent of brands published data on the number of workers who have received late wage payments, suggesting that many have limited knowledge on whether labourers in their supply chain have been paid during the pandemic.

“Brands have continued to profit throughout the pandemic, whilst garment workers have endured the devastating impacts of their cancelled orders, including unpaid wages, food insecurity, employment instability and poverty,” Fashion Revolution’s global policy director, Sarah Ditty said.

Arguably the most damaging finding of the report is that 99 per cent of brands did not disclose the number of workers in their supply chain who are paid a living wage. Nazma Akter, the executive director of the Awaj Foundation, a grassroots NGO campaigning for workers’ rights, told Fashion Revolution that workers are living “hand to mouth every day”.

“In reality, workers’ lives haven’t got any better. They have been struggling. We have had demonstrations, and we have been fighting locally and internationally with the #PayUp campaign. But brands don’t seem to want to pay their bills on time or help workers. I am very disappointed and very angry,” she said.

Most brands also fell short when it came to the transparency of their environmental impact. As per research from the Global Fashion Agenda and McKinsey & Company, the fashion industry accounts for an estimated 4 per cent of global greenhouses gases. While 62 per cent of the brands surveyed did publish the carbon footprint of their own facilities, less than 30 per cent reported the footprint of their manufacturers and only 17 per cent disclosed this information regarding their raw materials.

We want the public to use this information to charge their activism and not their credit card

Carry Somers, Fashion Revolution

Additionally, 44 per cent of the brands published their targets on sustainable materials but less than a third defined what actually constitutes a “sustainable material”.

Fashion Revolution said it had identified an ongoing trend among brands where many of them “disclose the most information about their policies and commitments, but much less about the results and outcomes of their efforts”.

Positively, the report found that it is becoming more common among major brands to publish a list of the manufacturers where the final stage of production occurs, such as cutting, sewing, finishing of products and packing them for shipment.

“A decade ago, having public access to these factory lists seemed like an unrealistic dream for many NGOs and trade unions, but now nearly half of the major brands in this index publish such a list,” the report said.

Fashion Revolution’s co-founder, Carry Somers, stressed that the findings were not intended to tell consumers where they should or shouldn’t shop, rather encourage the public to hold them to account. “We want the public to use this information to charge their activism and not their credit card,” Somers said.

The Independent has contacted OVS, H&M, Timberland, The North Face, PrettyLittleThing, Chanel, Fashion Nova, Tom Ford, Topshop, Forever 21 and Urban Outfitters for comment.