Should brands have to share their production volumes?

But if we push beyond the mantra a little, we can see this sustainability effort has an inbuilt problem. Because we can’t contextualise the most important of the 3Rs – reduce – when we don’t know how much is being produced in the first place.

 

So, should brands and retailers have to share their production volumes? 

 

Push for transparency

In recent years, there has been a greater push to get transparency from the fashion industry around production levels.

 

Fashion Revolution’s Fashion Transparency Index has been running for eight years and aims to help keep the fashion industry accountable by ranking how transparent 250 of the world’s largest fashion brands and retailers are. This includes their disclosure of production volumes.

 

Ghana-based non-profit The Or Foundation launched its #SpeakVolumes campaign in 2022, which also publicly asks fashion brands to share their production volumes.

 

It won’t surprise anyone that many have chosen not to provide the requested information, which means the production volume data on the Speak Volumes website represents only a very small percentage of fashion brands globally. But it still tells an interesting story.

 

For one, there are two types of brand disclosures. The first is production volumes that have not been shared directly with #SpeakVolumes but were published elsewhere, such as in annual reports.

 

The second type of disclosure comes directly from brands who have filled in the Speak Volumes data collection form and committed to disclosing production volumes in sustainability reports each year. 

 

On the whole, it is smaller brands who have agreed to directly disclose production volumes to Speak Volumes. Equally, their production volumes tend to be considerably lower than the data from larger brands.

 

Compare Wrangler’s 175 million pieces produced in 2022 to ASKET’s 231,383 pieces in the same year. 

 

It’s likely that smaller brands feel more able to share their data because their production volumes are relatively low. They’re essentially a small part of the big problem.

 

They may also use sustainability as a point of differentiation in the market, which means they’re willing to share this data publicly to help in consumer decision-making.

 

At the same time, while figures for large brands are few and far between on the Speak Volumes website and tend to come from annual reports rather than direct disclosure, they are more likely to show a reduction in production volume over time.

 

Whereas the data provided by small to medium brands tends to show an increase in volume each year. This isn’t surprising. Small brands are working to grow and scale their businesses which means producing more.

 

But it does show that the issues around the amount of clothing produced each year aren’t black and white. Especially when we drill down into the figures further.

 

Clarity and context are necessary

One of the biggest problems is lack of clarity around some of the data on Speak Volumes website, particularly when it comes from annual reports.

 

One notable name is Adidas, whose annual report figures suggest a staggered reduction in production between 2019 (528 million pieces) and 2023 (328 million pieces). However, these figures may not tell the whole story as it’s unclear if they include licensee products or collaborations. 

 

Where data does show a reduction in production volume for a brand year-on-year, there is no context attached to the figures. Is it simply due to a sales drop-off, a market contraction, or product line discontinuation? Or is it a planned decrease in production due to recognition of the industry’s environmental problems?

 

The former suggests that the production volumes could increase again, while the latter indicates an actual strategic shift to reduce production.

 

This shows why it’s important that the industry, consumers, and regulators don’t just take production volume disclosures at face value. Context and clarification are vital to get a true picture of the scale of production.

 

It’s for this reason that Speak Volumes requires brands to disclose volumes by units rather than by weight. Using weight as a metric to report production volumes makes it hard to quantify that volume because different types of garments have different weights. Essentially, there’s no way to tell what one tonne equates to in terms of number of items.

 

Data sharing needs to be consistent

As The Or Foundation points out, the Speak Volumes campaign isn’t asking for information that fashion brands don’t have. Every brand knows what they produce because they pay for it. But they’re just reluctant to share that information.

 

As new sustainability legislation begins to be implemented around the world, there’s a question around whether it should go further and force brands to have to share their production volumes. Because currently all we have are incredibly broad metrics like the estimate that between 80 and 150 billion items of clothing are produced every year.

 

This makes it incredibly difficult for the industry to collectively find ways of reducing its environmental impact. We simply don’t know how many garments are out there.

 

And even in the case of the brands that have directly disclosed production volumes to Speak Volumes, there are gaps in their reporting. Many only have data listed for a single year, which indicates they aren’t providing production data every year. This could be an active decision, while it’s also possible that the Speak Volumes website isn’t regularly updated but the brand is open about its production volumes.

 

But again, without any legislation to force yearly disclosures, it’s very difficult to track what’s happening within a single brand - let alone a whole industry.

 

Transparency and accountability are the only way that everyone can get to grips with what we’re dealing with – and start developing tactics to cut overproduction, reduce waste, and introduce new business models that make more out of the garments we already have.

 

But everything starts with knowing how much is produced.