Transforming the Textile Industry: Building Transparent and Traceable Value Chains

The textile supply chain is complex, with multiple actors involved at each stage in the process. Ensuring the supply chain is transparent and traceable is therefore a challenge. Currently, only 21% of brands disclose their supplier lists beyond their direct manufacturers, making it difficult to trace inputs. And due to the informal nature of the many business relationships in the sector, they are often not tracked, and they can constantly change. The quality of supply chain data and its availability are limited. For example, primary lifecycle data on energy, water and emissions are often missing or generic, leading to uncertainty and reliance on data sourced by others. Greenwashing risks and methodological inconsistencies also persis. More standardized methodologies like the Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) or Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) can substantially mitigate these barriers, as they set standard rules to calculate environmental impacts — thus enhancing comparability and reducing methodological ambiguity across LCA results.