Net Zero Initiative for Apparel and Footwear

Executive Summary

This is the guidance document to Pillar B of the NZI dashboard as applied to the Apparel & Footwear sector. Pillar B aims to quantify a company's positive impact on greenhouse gas emissions within its ecosystem. Here, we focus on the contribution of a company's solutions to reducing its clients' direct and indirect emissions compared to a baseline scenario. This report is divided into two parts:

• Part 1: the apparel and footwear sector’s contribution to global carbon neutrality.
• Part 2: the Apparel and Footwear Sectoral Toolbox for Estimating Avoided Emissions.

PART 1 – THE APPAREL & FOOTWEAR SECTOR’S CONTRIBUTION TO GLOBAL CARBON NEUTRALITY

Summary of the Challenges of Decarbonization in the Apparel and Footwear Sector

• Growth in production and consumption, combined with a decline in clothing use, increases the apparel and footwear sector’s GHG emissions. This makes it difficult to meet the sector’s science-based reduction target through energy efficiency and decarbonization alone—without a decrease in production.
• For the industry to reduce its annual clothing production in terms of volume and to decarbonize its value chain, consumers’ wardrobes and habits must change. The wardrobe of the future should be streamlined and rely primarily on existing clothes (secondhand, rental), with less waste thanks to repairs and durable clothing.

Summary of the Role of the Apparel and Footwear Industry in Decarbonization

• The only scientifically valid definition of “net zero” currently applies only to the Earth itself.  The Net Zero Initiative views each company as an entity that must contribute to the goal of global and national carbon neutrality by using a series of independent indicators to align a company's climate performance with the global net-zero target.
• Pillar B is designed to quantify a company's impact on the decarbonization of its value chain, outside its own reporting scope (Pillar A). A company's contribution to decarbonization—products and services that help avoid emissions, i.e., its ability to help its customers decarbonize—compared to a baseline scenario.
• The main way to reduce the sector’s emissions is to reduce the number of new garments and shoes produced, by increasing the number of times existing clothes are worn and by increasing the number of times new clothes are worn; reducing the carbon footprint of new garments and footwear is also a key strategy.
• Claims regarding avoided emissions should promote companies' decarbonizing products and services. However, since overconsumption is the sector's main issue in terms of GHG emissions, It is essential to limit these claims to those companies that do not encourage overconsumption. Eligibility criteria are therefore established to limit claims of avoided emissions to only those companies whose business models are not based on overconsumption.

PART 2 – THE APPAREL & FOOTWEAR SECTORAL TOOLBOX FOR ESTIMATING AVOIDED EMISSIONS

Summary of the Toolbox Contents

This toolbox consolidates methodological findings for the apparel and footwear sector and provides sector-specific methodological guidelines on avoided emissions for each solution-context pairing. For certain solutions, the toolbox also provides detailed methodology sheets and an initial estimate of avoidance factors (AFs) for a specific combination of solution and context.