Sustainability in the fashion industry doesn’t just take a village, it takes forward-looking and forward-thinking villagers—aka innovative suppliers, mills, recyclers, agents, brands, retailers, and more. But a like-minded community can only thrive when participants are willing to hold others to account.

Such accountability is growing, even if it takes regulations to make it stick. Proposed in March, the first-of-its-kind legislation would make producers of textiles and apparel goods sold within the state liable for the industry’s waste. SB 707 would mandate that the sector fund an Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) program—a statewide platform for discarded garments and fabrics made up of Producer Responsibility Organizations (PRO), which would manage the collection, sortation and recycling process.

Meanwhile, two new milestones were passed over the summer. The Netherlands launched its long-awaited extended producer responsibility policy for textiles in July, making it the third European country after France and Sweden to hold brands responsible for clothing waste.

Another initiative gaining traction is creating garments without using virgin fibers, driving both recycled inputs and garment recycling initiatives. With polyester making up a significant portion of the fashion sector’s material intake, innovators have been working behind the scenes to develop circular alternatives. In India, which is the global hub for recycling, small- and medium-sized businesses are also looking at the potential to grow with new technologies.

Mother Nature, however, has proven harder to tame. Climate change has turned into climate chaos for much of fashion’s manufacturing arm, with unprecedented floods, monsoons and factory-broiling heatwaves in Southeast Asia. In Dhaka, Bangladesh, 20 percent of garment factories, or roughly 1,155, can be found at low elevations within easy reach of rain-swollen rivers, according to the Garment Worker Diaries, an initiative of Microfinance Opportunities,

But necessity is the mother of invention. Investments in clean energy totaled $495 billion worldwide in 2022, according to Statista, and the unsung hero of the renewable movement is surprisingly not solar power but wind energy, which has advanced to become the primary source of renewable power generation in the states, per energy research and consultancy Wood Mackenzie.

Download the report to learn:

• How Nike, H&M and Lululemon are using renewable energies
• How denim-heavy label Madewell is upping regenerative cotton usage
• Which fashion-producing cities are the most vulnerable to climate change
• How Reformation is tackling sustainability from sourcing to emissions reduction to recycling
• How chemical and hydrothermal recycling firms like Unifi, Circ and Ambercycle are revving up for large-scale adoption
• How Artistic Milliners is selling excess solar power back to the public grid