Sustainable Fashion: Communication Strategy 2021 - 2024

This document sets out UNEP’s sustainable fashion communication strategy, diagnosing the sector’s environmental and social harms and proposing systemic, coordinated change across citizens, policymakers and the private sector. The fashion industry is one of the largest contributors to the climate and ecological crisis. It is nature intensive, reliant on fossil fuels, polluting throughout its value chain and wasteful to the extreme. It is also predicated on a culture of overproduction and consumption, and facilitated by an underpaid workforce facing discrimination, unsafe working conditions and harassment. Reported figures show the industry is responsible for between 2–8% of global carbon emissions, with a recent authoritative report placing it at 4%, and the sector touches SDGs 6, 12, 13, 14, 15, and 1, 5, 8. The strategy says current efforts fall short and calls for systemic transformation across design, production, use and disposal.