UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) has announced it’s investing £6 million to support the fashion and textile industry integrate more sustainable practices.
The funding is part of UKRI’s £15 million circular fashion programme. UKRI says the “complexity and reach” of the textiles industry means the environmental impact is not fully understood.
This is the reason UKRI says its funding three teams of researchers that are working in partnership with industry experts and other stakeholders. The teams are aiming to build a bank of data and knowledge and support the sector in adopting sustainable circular business models.
The three teams are the Back to Baselines in Circular Fashion and Textiles Network, which is being led by the University of Leeds, aims to establish a baseline to analyse the current status of sustainability practices in the industry.
The Future Fibres Network, which is being led by the University of Exeter, is aiming to embed environmental sciences in the fashion, wider apparel, and textile sectors, and establish systematic, circular and sustainable principles as the industry norm.
The IMPACT+ Network, which is led by Northumbria University, will assemble a cross-disciplinary team to improve the collation, analysis and assessment of data to advance the reliability and authenticity of environmental impact measures.
This investment will bring together industry experts and researchers in environmental science and fashion to embed sustainability in the fashion and textile industry.
Professor Peter Liss, Interim Executive Chair of the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), part of UKRI, said: “The fashion industry makes a significant contribution to the UK.
“But it also impacts the environment, including using water resources and causing emissions of greenhouse gases. We need to better understand the true impact.
“This investment will bring together industry experts and researchers in environmental science and fashion to embed sustainability in the fashion and textile industry.”
Earlier this year, a report by Deloitte and Google Cloud found 47% of consumers are choosing to spend more for sustainable goods and services and have begun to demand transparency around companies’ carbon footprints.
Climate action NGO (non-governmental organisation), WRAP has published two reports that inform its recommendation that the UK government should adopt an EPR (extended producer responsibility) scheme for the fashion and textiles industry.
This was despite the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) Thérèse Coffey saying that she’s not going to include textiles as part of EPR in the “near future”. Coffey said that the focus must be on ensuring the policy is in place for packaging.
