Collective call to action needed on climate change
For over decades, Epic Group has been a key player in the apparel industry – first as a major textile trading house, then as a leader in sourcing quality fabrics, and since 2005 as a state-of-the-art manufacturing company with facilities in Bangladesh, Jordan, Vietnam and Ethiopia. To meet ever-changing market trends and its customers’ demands, the company combines speed, efficiency, technology, design and innovation. In an interview with Fibre2Fashion, the company’s Executive Vice President for Sustainability and Innovation Vidhura Ralapanawe discusses sustainability in the global textile-apparel industry and what the industry should do to address climate crisis.
How would you describe the scope of sustainability in the global textile industry at the moment? How has it evolved in the last five years?
What we saw in the last five years is a coalescing diverse sustainability approaches to a few common themes. The focus of action has shifted to climate action and circularity at the expense of other areas. The other areas of sustainability are equally important, and their lack of limelight is a huge risk for the industry.
Climate crisis remains the most significant challenge for humanity. The aspirational target of the Paris Agreement, 1.5°C temperature increase over the pre-industrial era, is no longer achievable, and we know that even the current 1.3°C increase is not a level that we can live with prosperity. Textile and garment industry, which accounts for 10 per cent of total global carbon emissions according to UNEP, has a leadership role to play to mitigate and redress.
Resource utilisation and waste have become the next significant challenges. Textile industry has a massive waste problem. The vast used apparel dumps in the Atacama Desert in Chile or in beaches and rivers of Accra, Ghana tells the non-glamorous side of fashion.
Though we speak about circularity, it’s a long way away. We simply cannot sustain this business model a lot longer.
We must look into fibre consumption as well. We are stretching the limits of traditional natural fibres, and the rapid scaling of synthetic (or fossil fuel) fibres is not sustainable, especially looking at micro-plastic pollution they create. Shifting from virgin polyester to ‘recycled’ water bottles sounds more sustainable than it actually is. We need true circularity to solve both our waste and fibre challenges. We also need to work on creating new types of biofibres.
The conversation about climate and circularity has crowded out other impacts such as water and chemicals. We are a thirsty industry, and are responsible for significant groundwater extraction, and pollution. We also use significant amount of chemicals from fibre stage to laundries. We must become better custodians of water – from extraction, purification before discharge, and also look at eliminating toxicity across the value chain.
These may sound like insurmountable problems, and from the view of the current paradigm, they are. But they also represent a huge space for innovation! Our industry has not significantly evolved – say compared to transportation, IT or energy, and to solve the big environmental challenges we need a process of radical innovation. As the fashion community, we must commit to reinvent how we do business.
There is a lot of talk about slow fashion, circular economy and conscious consumption globally. What is the ground reality of it all? Do you see a paradigm shift?
Yes, there is a lot of buzz about circular economy, but meaningful transition has been quite elusive. While we have about 0.7 per cent of our clothing coming from recycled fibres, only 0.2 per cent of it is garment-to-garment (or post-consumer-waste) recycling, and this too is mostly from cotton. So, there is more hype to circularity than action.
In many areas, our way of producing (and using) apparel and what circular economic models demand is not aligned. We are rapidly shifting to blended fibres which are difficult to recycle with the current technologies. Retooling a linear model to a circular one requires a fundamental rethink about how we operate our businesses, and very few organisations are willing to think about it – let alone make the changes at a meaningful scale.
Slow fashion and conscious consumption appear to be growing, albeit at a very slow pace, while fast and ultra-fast fashion are growing at a much more rapid rate. Slow fashion is yet to reach a critical mass to re-shape the industry. Actually, our industry incentivises the opposite. Ultra-fast fashion is taking over some consumer segments – thus walking backwards in global sustainability needs.
What endeavours are being taken in this regard at Epic?
We are pre-dominantly a cotton-based apparel maker. During the past two years, we have focused on product development with both pre- and post-consumer waste recycled fibre. We are working with multiple suppliers to blend pre- and post-recycled cotton fibre into our products.
We are working with some pre-consumer cotton recyclers such as Cyclo in Bangladesh, to develop products with a high percentage of recycled fibre in it. We are also in the lookout for early stage and mature circular organisations to partner as we scale up our circularity related offerings to our customers. Epic will move on circularity aggressively in the next few years.
Your company has garment manufacturing facilities in Bangladesh and Ethiopia with expansions in Jordan and India. Which of these countries is leading when it comes to sustainability and why?
I think each country has its pluses and opportunities to improve. In Ethiopia, we have almost 100 per cent renewable electricity and sustainable biomass sources for thermal energy. In Jordan, we have abundant solar electricity potential and ability to wheel offsite solar electricity. Bangladesh has a growing pre-consumer waste recycling industry, and the country is now retooling itself to become a global used garment recycling hub. It also has an ever-improving skillset to support sustainability. Challenges for each country are different too.
Our industry needs a rapid transition, and this should be done without leaving any country behind. It is not about winners and losers – but the collective good and prosperity. No company can become sustainable by itself; we become sustainable within a larger ecosystem at national level as well as with our brand and supply chain partners. We must collaborate to develop that ecosystem in each country so that the whole industry can transition.
What is your view about the adoption of renewable energy by the textile industry? What are the challenges?
Rapid transition to renewable energy is critical for all industries if we want to manage the climate crisis. Our industry uses two forms of energy – electricity and thermal energy.
For electricity, market access determines the pace of transition towards renewable energy. Rooftop solar is now a given in all buildings in the sector. At Epic, all new factories from 2020 are designed with a full solar roof. We plan to build about 7,000 kW of solar PV in our factories by 2025. This, however, only accounts for a portion of our electricity. We need direct power purchase agreements (DPPAs) from renewable energy developers for the balance, but such schemes are not available in all geographies.
Shifting thermal energy to renewable sources is more complex. The traditional approach of ‘electrify everything and power them through renewable electricity’ doesn’t work everywhere. Renewable potential is not equal, and some grids are simply not designed for this extra load.
We need to create sustainable biomass supply chains (preferably from agricultural waste), and look into other options such as green hydrogen, while looking at breakthrough innovation to reduce the needs for heat; and some of these transitions will be slow and painful.
What would be your suggestions to apparel manufacturers in Asian and African countries to cut back carbon emissions?
In addition to renewable energy, the most untapped source for emission reduction is energy efficiency. The amount of thermal energy lost in the steam systems in the global apparel industry is enormous. Correct design, implementation, and good operations and maintenance are critical. Similar inefficiencies exist in compressed air. Efficient pumps and motors, for example IEC class 4, must be mandatory in the sector now. To do these effectively, a lot of capacity building is necessary – not only in the plant engineering teams, but also among consultants, contractors, and universities. We are yet to effectively use system design and optimisation software tools; these have to change.
Focus on defect reduction and material optimisation sometimes have a higher emission decrease than what an apparel maker can achieve internally. This is a virtually untapped opportunity that will also result in a huge benefit to the bottom line.
What is the action plan for the next two years at Epic with regards to lowering carbon emissions and circularity?
For carbon emission reduction, we are focusing on renewable energy and energy efficiency. We still have a bit more distance to go to get our factories running at optimum resource efficiency, and we aim to complete this work in the next two years.
As for circularity, first, we will be shifting what we do with our cutting table waste – from informal recycling industry to high value-added recycling choices. We want all our cotton-based products to have some percentage of recycled fibres – and to move away rapidly from 100 per cent virgin fibre-based products.
We are looking to build partnerships with circularity innovators globally. We are interested in working together and also to support them to build footprints in countries like Bangladesh.
My disappointment is that as an industry, we speak a lot about circularity, yet the traction from brands and retailers has been underwhelming for circular fibre produce. We are in the early stages of a transformation. We need brands and retailers to look at circularity products positively – with more flexibility in quality and pricing, so that we collectively build a circular economy. Without more risk taking from the brands, this will be a tough proposition.
What are some of the sustainable actions incorporated in the last five years by Epic?
Our initial strategy revolved around building and retrofitting facilities for resource efficiency. We pioneered the green factory movement in Bangladesh, with LEED certification, ensuring best in class sustainable design. We were investing on state-of-the art machinery in our laundries to get to lower water footprint. We began to scale our recycled polyester-based garments around seven years back.
In 2020, we announced our first formal sustainability strategy, with targets on greenhouse gas intensity reduction, freshwater intensity reduction, and chemicals and overall environmental management based on Higg Index Facility Environmental Module (FEM).
To reach our sustainability targets, we began scaling our rooftop solar programme, with 900 kW already installed, and another 4,000 kW in progress in our two new factories. We upgraded our first effluent treatment plant (ETP) for water reuse, with the second upgrade already in progress. We are investing in water and energy efficiency. We have removed 72 risky chemicals we had in our inventory. Our Higg FEM scores have improved from 33 to 73.
On the product side, we moved away from conventional cotton to BCI or equivalent, organic and recycled cotton since 2019. We are scaling up the use of more sustainable materials – recycled polyester, sustainable viscose. We are developing products with recycled cotton, natural dyes and biomaterials.
Since laundries carry a large environmental impact, we are working to optimise them. This includes upgrading washing machines and dryers with low impact machines, introduction of ozone washers and lasers to reduce manual operations and wash cycles. Our partnership with CleanKore saw us scale low-impact laundry-based products, which also removes hazardous potassium permanganate spray in dry processes. We are making 4 million CleanKore based garments for the next season, and plan to scale to 12 million per annum by 2024.
Greenwashing has been a rising concern for stakeholders and end-consumers whenever sustainability is discussed, even more so in the apparel and fashion industry. What are your thoughts on this?
It is a real and persistent issue. I think the apparel industry oversold consumer facing sustainability claims, which led to legal and regulatory challenges. Now many companies are hesitant to make even legitimate claims about their products. Contradictory messaging on green claims, including from the EU, have not been helpful for the industry to move forward.
We are stuck in a double bind – on one side, how do we communicate the progress we are making on innovations that cuts down environmental impact, and on the other hand, how do we provide meaningful messaging to consumers? It is an opportunity for introspection to ask what is an honest message we can give to consumers about our products?
We need to develop methodologies to provide meaningful, decision-oriented messaging to consumers. This is quite difficult as definitions of what is sustainable, and their context keep shifting. For example, downcycled plastic bottles (recycled polyester) converted into clothing is unlikely to be considered ‘sustainable’ for a lot longer.
As for communicating impact, the industry’s over-reliance on average impact values should also disappear. It is high time we invest across the supply chain to measure impact accurately – and if we don’t have data, we should stop making claims.
Since you are a sustainability specialist, how would you look at the recent outcome of the COP27 meeting in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt?
I believe that UN climate conferences have lost sight on what they are intended to do – perhaps due to the massive influx of fossil fuel lobbyists at COP27. We are definitely not responding to the urgency of the crisis. The national commitments are disappointing. We did not see the elevated ambition that countries were requested to demonstrate at the last COP – and although corporates are taking leadership in decarbonisation and Net Zero declarations, they have been too slow to convert these to real action on the ground globally.
Though we have come to an agreement on creating a fund for loss and damage, this will take a while to be established and funded – too little, too late.
We still do not speak with honesty about climate justice and climate equity – let alone action.
I come from a climate research background; so, I may be more sensitive to this perhaps compared to many others. We have already crossed 1.3°C global temperature increase, and even this will not allow humans to live in prosperity, with multiple ecosystems facing catastrophic collapse. The aspirational target of 1.5°C temperature increase is no longer a viable option. We have collectively failed.
Yet this is not a time for apathy or despair. We need to look at every ton of carbon released as a problem and mobilise all our resources towards rapid climate action. In our industry, this is generally interpreted as emission reduction only – and this too is looked at without context, equity or justice. I feel this is a constraining model.
Millions of apparel workers live in some of the most climate vulnerable locations in South Asia, Africa and Latin America. We need to work on adaptation and building community resilience. Cotton and other fibre crops are highly vulnerable to climate impacts as seen this year (and in previous years). We need risk management. Our industry has not looked into climate risks with the seriousness it deserves (and if we understood this, we would be ramping up action too).
Our industry requires a massive wakeup call and collective call to action on climate change. Our current approach of individual action will not scale, provide adequate resources and funding where it is needed. We need collaboration, with urgency. We can make a huge difference if we did so.
