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Fashion’s Responsible Supply Chain Hub (FReSCH): Investigating a just transition to a low-carbon circular fashion industry

Project description

Just transition to a low environmental impact circular fashion industry

The fashion industry has come under fire for harming the environment, committing human rights violations and providing poor job conditions for workers. The EU-funded FReSCH project aims to move the industry towards environmentally sustainable practices, built on justice and fairness. The project will research the optimal strategies for a just, fair and inclusive transition to a low-carbon circular fashion industry, using a novel methodology. This will be among the first attempts to examine economic, environmental and social sustainability to understand the trade-offs, tensions and outcomes in the transition to a more viable model.

Objective

The fashion industry is harming the environment and is also creating psychological and health impacts for workers due to poor working conditions and human rights abuses. Much of the focus of the fashion industry is on environmental sustainability with social sustainability largely ignored. There are trade-offs not only between business goals and sustainability but also between environmental and social sustainability practices. Ensuring environmental sustainability requires a parallel focus on justice and fairness. This action will contribute to the thematic European Commission priorities in terms of building a climate-neutral, fair and social Europe, and sustainable fashion value chains. It will research the optimal strategies for a just, fair and inclusive transition to a low-carbon circular fashion industry. This action is one of the first to investigate economic, environmental and social sustainability to understand the trade-offs, tensions and outcomes between these three in the transition to a low-carbon circular fashion industry. By using a novel methodology, simultaneous multi-level action research, this action will take a top-down and bottom-up perspective by examining a fashion supply chain in transition, H&M and its suppliers, in a country characterised by complex economic, environmental and social issues, Turkey. Action research in H&M will be instrumental in understanding the development of strategies and resources to cascade environmental and social sustainability practices throughout its supply chains. While, action research with suppliers, ‘Worker Circles’, will uncover the realities of SME suppliers and the outcomes of economic and environmental demands on working conditions and human rights practices to enable worker self-determination to solve problems in unique context-specific and customised ways.

Coordinator

UNIVERSITY COLLEGE DUBLIN, NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF IRELAND, DUBLIN
Net EU contribution
€ 196 590,72
Address
BELFIELD
4 Dublin
Ireland

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Region
Ireland Eastern and Midland Dublin
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
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Total cost
€ 196 590,72