Critical success factors that influence sustainable innovations in textiles include access to R&D funding, opportunities for stakeholder collaboration, and customer expectations in the marketplace.
Working with suppliers
Stakeholder collaboration supports access to funding and opportunities for scaling innovations in global supply chains. Enabling mechanisms to support the implementation of environmental innovations can be distinguished based on the actors involved – namely, those enabled by lead firms (in this case, fashion brands or retailers), those enabled by suppliers, those collectively enabled and those enabled by governments (Asian Development Bank, 2023).
For fashion brands and retailers, senior commitment is needed to drive sustainability strategies across supply chains. Strategic partnerships and long-term commitments by lead firms are needed to scale innovations such as alternative materials. For example, in 2023, Inditex signed a three-year contract to purchase regenerated polyester from Ambercycle to support the construction of the latter’s first commercial-scale factory to produce their textile-to-textile recycled polyester Cycora®. In 2025, Lululemon signed a 10 year off-take agreement with Samsara Eco to source recycled polyester and nylon, supporting commercialization efforts for the latter’s enzymatic recycling technology.
However, such offtake agreements – where a company agrees in advance to purchase a manufacturer’s output – are less common in the fashion industry than in other sectors (Sadowski et al., 2021). Often, suppliers are expected to take the most risk in terms of investing capital in machinery and staff training (Finamore, 2023).
Supporting small and medium-sized enterprises to drive sustainability
There are also opportunities in supporting small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to become driving forces toward a more sustainable fashion industry (European Commission, 2019). SMEs represent the vast majority of businesses in the fashion sector and are also leading the way on sustainability, as evidenced by many of the examples in this report.
The 2021 Fashion Accountability Report showed that SMEs outperformed large companies by 28 points on average, as they tended to provide more information on their sustainability credentials and focused on product durability and phasing out fossil fuel-based fabrics. SMEs are driving forces for a more sustainable fashion industry and key enablers for new technology adaptation, as well as key enablers for utilizing traditional knowledge techniques and nature-based solutions.
One way of harnessing the potential of SMEs is through setting up accelerator programs that support development and scaling by providing access to expertise, coaching, funding and market access. For example, LVMH’s La Maison des Startups was established in 2017 to accelerate collaboration between LVMH and startups whose solutions have potential in the luxury industry. This program provides workspace, coaching and access to LVMH’s ecosystem of 75 Maisons.
In 2022, Amazon launched its Sustainability Accelerator, a three-month program offering cash grants, expertise and mentoring, and access to Amazon’s networks, to support high-potential startups developing new recycling technologies or creating products with reduced impact on the environment to scale their businesses.
However, there is a fundamental mismatch between the funding landscape for innovation and the finance model of the fashion industry, which is focused on buying end products not committing to upstream material development, and this system prevents startup innovators from making a difference. Low-cost production is another market entry barrier because brands do not have the incentive to invest in sustainable or circular options. Extended producer responsibility (EPR) could help to address this imbalance in the marketplace as funding from EPR schemes could support the transition needed to develop industrial-scale infrastructure for collecting, sorting and processing textile waste and narrow the gap between low-priced virgin fibers and more sustainable alternatives.
Market needs and challenges
In terms of the marketplace, recycling technologies must be cheaper, more energy efficient and less polluting than conventional processes for producing virgin fibers (Baloyi et al., 2023). Commercial adoption and disruptive potential of alternative materials to virgin polyester and cotton will depend on their ability to match or exceed on cost, sustainability and performance (WTiN, 2023; Sadowski et al., 2021). Can the manufacturing process utilize existing machinery, or is specialized machine development required? Is the enabling technology cheaper and/or better than conventional materials? For example, does it compete on headline costs or post-processing and product production expenses? Does it compare favorably in terms of sustainability and performance to conventional materials? (WTiN, 2023).
In addition to considerations of impact on people and planet, fashion sourcing decisions involve a careful balancing act of aesthetics, quality, price and performance. Hence, the design appeal and performance characteristics of alternative yarns and materials should match or exceed what is currently available to brands and designers from virgin, fossil fuel-based sources. The impact of technological innovations should be assessed in terms of not only carbon and pollution reduction but also their economic impact upon enterprises.
Challenges include the fashion industry’s high degree of fragmentation and lack of commitment to long-term order volumes, long and capital-intensive innovation cycles, difficulty of deploying capital into emerging markets, and unequal power relations between brands and suppliers (Apparel Impact Institute and Fashion for Good, 2021). Firm size, resource limitations (technical or managerial) and operational performance objectives may also affect the take-up of sustainable innovations (Islam et al., 2021). Market adoption challenges such as cost barriers and consumer preferences should also be acknowledged. The entrenched fashion system, driven by economies of scale and low cost, presents a barrier to seeing next-generation solutions come to scale (Peters, 2024).
Despite consumers’ increasing environmental awareness, there is an attitude–behavior gap whereby consumers’ claimed preferences do not always translate into actual purchasing behavior, as this is also influenced by other factors such as price, quality and other product attributes (Rese et al., 2022). The lack of significant market demand for sustainable textiles (as seen in piecemeal commitment to alternative materials and processes, such as “capsule collections” rather than full product ranges) explains some of the industry resistance to change.
In addition to investment in technology and a shift in buyer-supplier relationship dynamics, effective legislation is needed to spur action on an industry-wide scale (Doyle, 2024). EPR is a reminder to all that producers must consider the options for disposal of their products when they are discarded, regardless of whether mass recycling could be profitable.
Trade-offs and unintended consequences
Sustainability initiatives can result in unintended negative consequences whereby the solution to one problem could cause or exacerbate a different problem somewhere else (Cernansky, 2021). Not all solutions intended to support more environmentally sustainable practices actually do so; for example, bio-based polyester alternatives have higher environmental impacts in certain areas than polyester itself. Another example is of certain chemical recycling technologies that require large amounts of energy (Zero Waste Europe, 2020), which could result in a higher carbon footprint than other virgin materials such as cotton. Many technologies use waste from other sectors, but the fashion industry needs to prioritize fiber-to-fiber recycling to close the loop for textile products (European Commission, 2022). Synthetics are inherently unsustainable as they are produced from fossil fuels and shed microplastics that persist in our environment (Changing Markets Foundation, 2021).
While some new materials claim to be biodegradable as they can decompose quickly in industrial composting conditions, this may not be achievable (or happens at a considerably slower rate) in the natural environment or in anaerobic digesters, which some municipalities use for compostable waste.
The nature of agricultural feedstock raises ethical questions regarding the potential competition with food crops for first-generation biomass feedstocks (corn, sugarcane, edible oils) compared to second-generation feedstocks such as agro-waste (Rosenboom et al., 2022). While the industry needs to scale next-generation materials such as textile-to-textile recycling, plant-based leather substitutes, and materials made from carbon dioxide to reduce emissions in line with SBTis, some of these technologies are in early stages of development so emissions data are based on a lab environment, which may have a different energy mix to commercial production locations (Sadowski et al., 2021).
Scalability is important but, while some nature-based solutions may not reach industrial scale, they help to reintegrate marginalized communities in an environmentally friendly way. Many luxury brands have started to recognize and invest in this production model, which aligns the social and environmental bottom lines. The British brand Vivienne Westwood has worked with the United Nations program Ethical Fashion Initiative on several collections developed with African female artisans, for example using recycled metal found in Kenyan slums and the ancient Bogolan fabric making technique from Mali.
There are no definitive criteria for a sustainable fashion product. Standards such as OEKO-TEX or EU Ecolabel go some way to identifying criteria for determining whether a product has been manufactured using sustainable methods, but they only address specific parts of the production process. No standard covers the entire process from raw material to end product, or end of life. For example, cotton is a natural fiber that is biodegradable but the finishes applied during textile processing to improve material performance slow down the rate of biodegradability for the end fabric and the active compounds of finishing formulations are mostly not biodegradable (Zambrano et al., 2021).
Natural fibers are not necessarily better than synthetic, as fiber choice is only one part of a complex picture and fibers still have to be grown, dyed, finished, sewn and transported – all of which have different environmental impacts. Furthermore, the focus of sustainability research and innovation is primarily on materials for fabrics, not the manufacturing of trims and accessories, such as buttons, zips, hardware and embellishments, which is a substantially neglected area of research (Islam et al., 2021).
Technology and the growth challenge
A sustainable production process does not necessarily result in a sustainable garment if it is barely used before disposal. For the fashion industry to meet its carbon emissions targets by 2030, a fundamental slowing of production and consumption is needed (Coscieme et al., 2022; Niinimäki et al., 2020), so the focus should be on prevention of overproduction and reuse of existing products. However, with greater economic growth comes greater resource consumption and the desired transformation to a slower, more circular economy is not yet occurring at the necessary magnitude and pace. The fashion industry needs to completely rethink the current system of overproducing clothes, so they are made to be repaired, reused and recycled at the end of life. Making clothes that are aesthetically pleasing and designed to last is important for encouraging emotional attachment to garments that can also be passed on or shared, not thrown away.
This report has focused on environmental aspects and does not consider whether or how sustainable fashion technologies can positively impact workers, communities, and livelihoods in terms of their socioeconomic effectiveness. However, as socioeconomic aspects of sustainability are closely bound with environmental impacts, further work is needed to uncover the impact of technological solutions on working conditions for the majority of manual workers in fashion supply chains. This would support a just transition toward a net-zero carbon future that is fair and inclusive, creating decent work opportunities and leaving no one behind (ILO, 2015).