The Tamesis
Sustainability regulations and the language used to describe them are changing “almost as fast as fashion,” Lehmann said. “Beyond geopolitics, we have this volatility where you don’t even know where lawmakers are going to take us.”
In the United States, lawmakers appear to be taking a deregulatory path. On Thursday, the Trump administration announced plans to repeal long-standing federal assessments of the harm climate change is doing to people and the environment, removing the government’s power to curb emissions that accelerate global warming.
Lehmann added that the rollback was “deeply shocking.” “Cheap, reliable renewable energy is not just climate policy, it is economic strategy. It can create jobs, attract investment and solidify industrial leadership for the future,” he said. “At the same time, withdrawing from climate safeguards risks ceding markets, innovation and economic resilience to countries that see the clean energy transition as the next frontier of global competitiveness.”
Politics aside, volatility — and sometimes chaos — around sustainability is tying things up in supply chains, as brands grapple with what to do first, suppliers get stuck, and developing new business takes longer as both sides consider whether their relationships are compliant.
In order for brands to be compliant, they need data from their suppliers; to make their suppliers compliant, they have to put in the work – upskilling workers to use new data collection systems, installing hardware and software that will help make this happen, and sometimes operating multiple systems simultaneously before even considering the actual sustainability improvements required. All of this comes at a cost. Add in tariffs and things get even more confusing. “Manufacturers are under pressure to bear some of the tariffs, so prices are lower but the workload is greater,” said Matthijs Crietee, secretary-general of the International Apparel Federation (IAF). “It’s a difficult equation.”
For Ereks-Blue Matters, an Istanbul-based circular clothing maker that counts Fiorucci and Wrangler as clients, the new reporting requirements are both helpful and harmful. Head of strategy and innovation Roman Nassi said that while their “conditions have improved significantly”, in terms of providing a baseline to make the year-on-year improvement in the environment easier to see, they also need a significant increase in time and staff to manage data collection and keep production going. “The customer onboarding process now takes longer as a comprehensive social and environmental audit must be completed and assessed before production can begin.”
ESG regulations require Narcy to provide “comprehensive documentation”, including DPPs, life cycle assessments (LCA) and social life cycle assessments, and he said that “in addition to a brand bearing the cost of a single audit, our factories are currently bearing the majority of compliance costs”. Factories need more support to meet these growing demands, Naci continued, because without it, brands’ relationships with suppliers are likely to become more strained, at a time when partnerships are what keep already struggling supply chains moving.
But beyond cost, there is still not enough coordination in data collection. “If you’re a vendor and you have 20 customers, and they’re not all consistent on what they’re asking for, how they’re asking for it, and what format it should be delivered in. It just multiplies the work you have to do,” Crietee said. “This is truly an industry challenge.”
