Top-down Change – Building a Sustainable Fashion Industry in Vietnam
Thus far in my look at how to impact change in the ethical fashion industry I analyzed a grassroots middle school project to decrease overconsumption, and systematic change in Cambodia that caused waves globally. Now, I turn to look at a multi-stakeholder organization that aims to impact the garment industry from the top-down.
Changing business practices and altering people perceptions of how to succeed in the fashion industry is a big task. Organizations like the Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC) and Fashion Revolution have been taking on this task from the producer and consumer side respectively. The SAC in particular has been able to penetrate the market and build a standard around what sustainable and ethical fashion should look like, and more importantly, how companies and factories can achieve and prove these standards. They’ve been able to achieve this by establishing the Higg Index, an industry wide auditing tool to measure sustainability practices and labor standards. Even with the prevalence of this tool and the growing trend of sustainable fashion, the garment industry still struggles to raise standards.
One recent multi-stakeholder initiative that has caused waves in the industry is Vietnam’s Race to the Top program. A collaboration founded in 2015 and boasts big name brand participation, including Nike and Gap Inc., in large part due to its association with the SAC. Race to the Top was founded to answer the question: “What if, rather than a system characterized by a race to the bottom framed by tragedy there was a race to the top with a sustainable system of apparel characterized by measurable progress both in environmental performance and the well-being of workers.” To do this, they needed the help of all parties involved, brands, governments, NGOs, and nonprofits.
The program has effectively brought together all the pieces and put them together to work as one, from encouraging sector-wide use go the Higg Index, to working with Better Work to maximize their efforts in the industry. With the multi-stakeholder approach, large scale problems like climate change and human rights violations cannot be solved by one company alone nor the perfect government policy, there needs to be a collaboration between all stakeholders to converge on common goals for all organizations.
After a pilot program with three mills, the Race to the Top initiative was able to produce drastic cuts in electricity and water usage. This not only is beneficial to the environment but also saves money for bottom line driven corporate leaders and ultimately results in lower costs for fabrics. These systematic changes are tedious to implement, but in the long-run, lead to a more reliable and cheaper supply chain. It is important to consider the long-term benefits when forming these programs, and look beyond quarterly earnings.
Vietnam’s Race to the Top program has lofty goals such as streamlining assessments, lean manufacturing to facilitate worker-manager dialogue, incentivizing better buying patterns, and creating capital for improvement activities and sustainably operating factories. I’ll be keeping an eye on the group to see how these goals play out, for now, they have made some headway in raising sustainability standards in local mills. These top down approaches can take time to trickle down and make impact. Also, with so many factors at play, it’s near impossible to control for every factor, requiring flexibility and frequent readjustments to strategy. I look forward to following up on their progress in the following years.
As I continue my graduate studies I will be analyzing different approaches to shifting the fashion industry and identifying when each approach would be most impactful. Each situation is unique and requires different solutions. From small scale grassroots projects that grow into global movements to having the right policy lined up at the right moment in time, to shifting mindsets from the top down, it’s an energizing time to be a part of sustainable and ethical fashion. There are a growing number of opportunities for people to step in and drive change in the industry, as companies open up to the idea of sustainable fashion, consumers demand a better product, and tools are made available to help us achieve this. Regardless of which approach you gravitate to, there will always need to be some degree of top-down change in order to make drastic shifts within our corporate structures and government policies, it’s a continuous process.