What the STICA progress report 2021 says of Swedish fashion companies climate impact
STICA, Swedish Textile Initiative for Climate Action, was founded in 2020. It’s purpose is to “Support apparel and textile companies operating in both the Nordic and international markets to set science-based targets and reduce their greenhouse gases in line with 1.5°C warming pathway, as outlined by the United Nations Framework on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement”. The fact is that the global fashion industry stands for 3-7% of the global carbon emissions and the world desperately needs to half it’s emission before 2030. The textile industry has it’s role to play to avoid further climate crisis. STICA is a platform for companies to share and learn best practices, to create roadmaps for the textile industry and create cross-sectoral collaborations. The transition is believed to increase Swedish textiles companies competitiveness on a global market and inspire the global textile industry to climate action.
The initiators are Michael Schragger, from Sustainable Fashion Academy, together with H&M, Kappahl, Peak Performance and elco. Several companies have joined such as Casall, Acne Studios, Gina Tricot, Stadium and Lindex.
The first report summarises the members carbon footprint in scope 1 and 2! In other words not their products, rather the energy use of buildings and so on. You can read the Green House Protocol on what’s included in scope 1 and 2 here! But this list of emissions do not include the clothes. However, the members needs to calculate scope 3 in 2021!
It’s still important that scope 1 and 2 is measured and that emissions are being reduced, but they don’t represent even the majority of these companies climate impact. In this report you can see the baseline of each company, how much their emissions has increased or been reduced, further what their target goals and year it needs to be met. This report makes the climate impact and efforts from each company transparent towards consumers too, which we are grateful about.
For example, Acne Studio has a carbon footprint 1209 tonnes CO2e, it has increased with 10% but there plan is to make a 50% cut by 2030. Another example is Casall which has carbon footprint of 83 tonnes CO2e, they made a 54% decrease and has a goal to decrease scope 1 and 2 by 2025 with 75%.
If you summarise the data from all members, 68% of the carbon footprint comes from heat and electricity. The smaller stores you have, with better isolation and heating alternatives and the more you do e-trade (products are stored at another company), the less carbon footprint you will be in scope 2. However, you might increase your carbon footprint in scope 3. That is why we are very much looking forward to the complete picture with scope 3 included.
If you want to dive deeper into the report, look at the average reduction of all 41 members and the average emissions per product, you can read the full report here!
