COP26

The United Nations Climate Change Conference 2021 is set to start on 31st of October 2021 in Glasgow. With so many of the worlds leaders coming together so close to home it's time for us all to ask ourself what we would like to see come out of these discussions.

We can already see from the events of the last year (Forest fires, subways flooding and the sea on fire again) that the time for talking has passed and we need to see clear and well thought through direction from those at the top. Unfortunately as this seems somewhat unlikely to happen we need to start asking what we can do instead.

So what can we do? First off we need to clearly articulate our vision for the future so we can tell those in charge exactly what we expect going forward. So over the next week or so we will be laying out the points we want to see addressed at COP26 and what we believe could be some of the solutions.

SUPPORT + LEGISLATION

The first point we would like to raise is the role of support (financial or otherwise) and legislation in guiding businesses towards a sustainable* future. Currently we are seeing a lot more legislation coming through in regards to textiles and fashion waste and practices. With things like a EPR (Extend Producer Responsibility) law on it’s way in Scotland. This is of course no bad thing and we have been pushing for something similar for years. There is however one caveat to our support of this sort of intervention; it needs to be backed by appropriate support to allow businesses to make the changes that are asked of them.

The Textiles and Fashion sector in particular lacks even the basic services required to effectively meet the requirements of the new regulations (Check out our post about bins for more on this!) and as a result we are deeply concerned that we will see even more companies go under, an increased use of UK sweatshops and manufacturers in countries without appropriate environmental and social safe guides in place when this law comes into affect.

What we would like to see come out of COP26 is a commitment from governments around the world to activity support their manufacturers to build the infrastructure needed to become more sustainable. Rather than relaying on legalisation and fines to force them into compliance. We know as a sector that this approach does not work and it only serves to hurt those that are most vulnerable.

No one sets out to harm the environment or workers, it is just often the easiest and cheapest option for many companies. So lets focus our efforts on making the easiest choice the right choice for textiles workers and the planet and lets make it clear to our governments that their role is to support us in making that possible.

What would you like to see come out of COP26? Tell us in the comment below or get in touch on social media!

*We will be using the term ‘sustainable’ as a catch all term in these post for simplicity but with in this we are considering ‘zero waste,’ ‘circular,’ ‘Net Zero,’ ‘Regenerative,’ etc.