The UK has launched a Sustainable Clothing Action Plan (SCAP) with a commitment to reduce the environmental ‘footprint’ of clothing throughout its life. Companies representing more than a third of UK clothing sales have signed up to the SCAP 2020 Commitment and GOTS is a supporter of this initiative.
Thirty companies have signed up so far, they will use a specially developed footprint calculator to report the total global impacts of the clothes they make, sell and recover, in a consistent way. The footprint calculator tool enables companies to quantify the impact of a wide range of improvement actions. The choice of organic fibre is one of the specified improvement actions (‘Move to lower impact fibres’).
This is the first time that a UK sustainability action plan includes validated organic environmental footprint data linked to a specific improvement action targeted at meeting sustainability goals.